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THE NEW MOON 


BY 

c. E. ^AMom 

AUTHOR OF GEORGE MANDEVILLE’s HUSBAND 

A 



NEW YORK 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 



Copyright, 1895, 

By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. 


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THE NEW MOON. 


digte, det er at holde 
Dommedag over sig selvd^ 

Standing as I do on the threshold of the 
unknown — for it cannot be many months, per- 
haps not many weeks, before, as the saying 
goes, I am called to my account” — I ask 
myself what conceivable Intelligence, human or 
divine, could possibly sum up that account so 
as to strike a clear and definite balance, either 
on the good or on the evil side. 

The doctrine of future rewards and punish- 
ments, I confess, seems to me at least as dubi- 
ous from the ethical as from the historic or 
the scientific point of view. Putting aside the 


2 


THE NEW MOON. 


question of responsibility, admitting for the 
nonce the paradox of free-will, I cannot but 
doubt whether God Himself can unravel the 
infinite tangle of human motives, and discrimi- 
nate the proportions of good and evil in a given 
action, or in the series of actions which we call 
a life. 

I believe, indeed, that the greater the intel- 
ligence the more clearly must it recognize how 
inadequate and inapplicable are such clumsy 
terms as “ good ” and evil.” They are useful 
rough-and-ready watchwords for the moral 
police of society; but when we probe beneath 
the surface of things, they soon cease to have a 
meaning. The Great Tribunal, I am ready to 
believe, would own itself incompetent in many 
a case which an Old Bailey judge, or a news- 
paper moralist, would decide and dismiss with 
summary dogmatism; just as the trained jurist 
or psychologist will confess himself baffled by 
many a problem for which the man in the 


THE NEW MOON. 


3 


Street has a confident solution ready to hand. 
How often do we hear some one say with an 
air of surprise, “ I don’t altogether understand 
that man — he is something of an enigma to 
me ! ” As though we quite understood any- 
body! As though we quite understood our- 
selves! Nothing is stranger in all the strange 
world than our child-like readiness to pin labels 
on the backs of our fellows, making known to 
all men by these presents that our neighbour is 
a saint or a scoundrel — nothing less and nothing 
more. 

Here, then, on the threshold of the un- 
known, waiting for the little postern to open, I 
look back over the windings of the path that 
has led me hither. I summon my own soul to 
judgment, and my soul answers to the call. 
But when I ask if it be Guilty ” or Not 
guilty,” it demurs to the formula. It pleads 
Not guilty,” but it adds Not innocent.” It 
is fit neither for Heaven nor for Hell, and it 


4 


THE NEW MOON. 


knows not how Purgatory can purge it or alter 
the unalterable past. Judge and prisoner in 
one, I while away the days that are left me in 
summing up my own case. I may not — prob- 
ably I shall not — clear my way to a definite 
self-judgment. When I come to think of it, 
indeed, it is only inveterate hypocrisy that 
makes me affect any wish to do so. My real 
desire is simply to live over again the hours — 
they were none too many — of the rarest friend- 
ship that ever fell to the lot of man. 

As I write the superlative, I smile. How 
many another has said the same before me? 
How many another, after I go hence, will keep 
the fair illusion travelling down the ages? Yet, 
as I look back, thinking of the men and women 
I have known, the world seems bare of perfect 
friendship, except my friend’s for me. Is it 
only that I understand my fellows as little as 
they have understood me ? Have all, or even 
many, of our commonplace acquaintances an 


THE NEW MOON. 


5 


illuminated border to the prim dull text of their 
Book of Life — a border scrupulously covered 
up when stranger eyes are peering — pictures in 
scarlet and purple and gold of things incredible 
and true? 

One thing at least is no illusion: there has 
been one perfect friendship under the sun. It 
may be an illusion to fancy it unique, but that it 
was perfect ” I know as surely as I know that 
I must die. It was embittered by no unkind 
word, flawed by no ungenerous thought; and 
now Time itself is powerless to mar or alter it, 
for it has passed beyond the reach of change. 
For that, too, I have come to thank “whatever 
gods there be.” 

But here is the point that sometimes tortures 
me. My friend had but one glimpse into the 
very depths of my soul; I read in her eyes a 
momentary horror of what she found there; 
and it was almost the last thing I ever saw in 
her face. Would she have understood if she 


6 


THE NEW MOON. 


had had time to think and realise? I tell my- 
self she would; nay, I know that she did. It 
is only the madman in me — the madman who 
every now and then wantons in the sanest of 
us — that denies or even doubts it. 

Would others understand? It matters noth- 
ing, but I sometimes wonder. We are apt to 
imagine that the strange adventures of our 
souls are peculiar to ourselves, unknown, in- 
comprehensible to our neighbours; but is that 
not merely because our neighbours’ souls are as 
dark to us as ours are to them? 

From time to time, by the quick lightning of 
disaster, we may get hurried glimpses into the 
depths of our own nature, but we draw back 
shuddering and shamed, or else elated, as the 
case may be, thinking we have seen and felt 
that which no other man in all his philosophy 
has dreamt of. We have the hero in us side by 
side with the slave. The martyr and the poet, 
on this little battlefield within, wage lifelong 


THE NEW MOON. 


7 


warfare on the braggart and the cheat — but it 
cannot be the same with our neighbours. They 
live as many leagues aloof from heroism as from 
crime. But, after all, I find it hard to remem- 
ber, and well-nigh impossible to realise, that 
my own outward life must have seemed to my 
acquaintances every whit as dull and common- 
place as theirs appeared to me. 

They knew no more of me than that I was a 
prosperous physician, for whom (after the first 
year or two of married life) one bit of fortune 
trod upon the other’s heels, so fast they fol- 
lowed; that I inherited large means at the age 
of twenty- five, and that my practice was estab- 
lished at a time when most men of my age 
were laboriously building up theirs. I under- 
stand that I have been called unsociable; but 
even that charge is palliated, if not converted 
into a virtue, by the legend current of my de- 
votion to my delicate and childless wife. The 
opinion was hazarded long ago that I had made 


8 


THE NEW MOON. 


a hasty and too early marriage. But that was 
when I was twenty-one and my wife twenty. 
We outlived the reproach. 


It was on a certain Good Friday morning, 
about seven years ago, that I sat in my con- 
sulting-room after breakfast, as usual dictating 
letters to my secretary. Mrs. Preston was a 
silent, capable person, who had formerly been 
a patient of mine. I had found, on her re- 
covery from a long and tedious illness, that 
she was impoverished and without friends. 
She had before her marriage been secretary to 
a friend of mine, and when her good-for-noth- 
ing husband died, she began to look about for 
employment. She came to us at the seaside 
in the days of her convalescence, because my 
wife was touched by her misfortunes, and 
pleased for the moment to be playing Lady 
Bountiful. But Mrs. Preston’s unbending spirit 


THE NEW MOON. 


9 


was ill adapted to the part of grateful bene- 
ficiary, and she would not stay with us long. 
Shortly after her somewhat abrupt departure, 
I was obliged to discharge my secretary. I 
wrote at once to Mrs. Preston offering her the 
post. For several years now she had not only 
taken charge of my correspondence, but of 
the housekeeping as well. My wife’s failing 
health made some such arrangement necessary, 
and it turned out admirably for all concerned. 

Perhaps I should say for my wife and me. 
What Mrs. Preston thought or felt, no one had 
an opportunity of judging. She was one of 
the inarticulate ones, but she did me excellent 
service. She was devoted to my wife, who 
often treated her capriciously ; and she effaced 
herself so completely that one came to reckon 
her among the blind forces of nature, always 
to be counted on — ever operating for our good, 
but not sentient and non-human. 

On this morning in question, Millicent — my 


10 


THE NEW MOON. 


wife — had sent down in rapid succession two 
messages to the effect that she must see me 
at once.” 

I found her on the sofa in her pretty morn- 
ing-room, wearing one of those loose pale- 
coloured gowns she so affected, her thin light 
hair done with elaborate care, and on her still 
childish face that worn, petulant look that was 
not so much ill- temper as mild reproach. 

''Why didn’t you come the first time, you 
bad boy?” she said. "You take care of 
everybody’s health but Mimi’s. I’ve got such 
a dreadful headache.” 

" You read too much,” I said, looking at the 
fat new volume in her lap, with the tortoise- 
shell paper-knife sticking out of it. " And 
that position, as I’ve often told you, strains the 
optic nerve more than — ” 

"Nonsense! I had my headache before I 
began to read.” 

"Then you shouldn’t have opened a book 


THE NEW MOON. 


11 


till it was gone. You would probably have 
been better by this time.” 

“ I wonder if you’re as unsympathetic with 
all the poor wretches who come here to see 
you as you are with me. You always make 
out it’s my fault when I’m not well.” 

I pulled out my watch. 

Jiffy ! ” she cried suddenly, sitting up, 
“ you mustn’t go yet.” 

I had opened the door. I could hear voices 
down in the hall. My man was admitting a 
patient who had come before regular hours. 

Jiffy! Jiffy!” my wife repeated shrilly. I 
shut the door suddenly, conscious as I often 
was, in spite of long custom, of my invincible 
shrinking in these later years from having the 
old pet name overheard. An unshared sense 
of the ludicrous may be a serious factor in the 
matrimonial problem. 

“ I want you to come to vespers with Mimi 
this evening,” my wife was saying. 


12 


THE NEW MOON. 


** Vespers to-day ? ” 

^'Yes; it’s Good Friday, and this morning I 
couldn’t — ” 

“ I don’t think you’re wise to go and sit in a 
cold, damp church, if you — ” 

“ Oh, I’ll be better by then. Besides, it 
ought to do me good to go to church,” she 
said vaguely. '‘You’ll come. Jiffy dear?” 

"No; I have several visits to pay this after- 
noon.” 

" They won’t keep you later than half-past 
four.” 

"Sure to. I have to go all the way from 
Hampstead to Hans Place.” 

"Bother! something’s always wrong on Fri- 
day. Who’s ill in Hans Place? Not any of 
the Dentons? ” 

"No; I don’t remember the name.” I 
glanced at the letter I held in my hand. 

My wife took up the envelope I dropped on 
the sofa. 


THE NEW MOON. 


13 


*‘What irritating writing!’’ she observed, 
holding it off and regarding it suspiciously. 
“ That Dr. Geoffrey Monroe looks as if it was 
written with a needle.” 

I was accustomed to my wife’s little views 
on the characteristics of handwriting, and had 
ceased to argue the matter. 

“ Whose writing is this? ” she said. 

I looked down on the envelope. I don’t 
know.” 

‘‘Isn’t it horrid. Jiffy?” 

“Well — no. I think it’s rather good.” 

“ Rather ” 

“Yes; no nonsense about it, and readable 
enough.” 

“ Do you mean to say you’d trust a person 
who wrote like that?” 

“I might.” 

“ Well, I wouldn’t. That’s the writing of a 
selfish, cold-blooded, calculating character.” 
She looked a little annoyed at my laughter. 


14 


THE NEW MOON. 


“ Oh, very well, if you won’t believe I can 
read handwriting — !” 

My dear, you’re like the rest of us,” I said, 
folding up the letter. You can read it if it’s 
plain enough.” 

Well, this is plain enough in all conscience. 
Can’t you see how stingy he is ? He grudges 
finishing his final e's, and his _y’s haven’t any 
loop, nothing but a straight downstroke. And 
look at the niggardly little t in 5/., with its prim 
cross exactly in the middle. Oh, he’s a horrid, 
parsimonious, domineering creature, you may 
depend on it. Who is it? ” 

I don’t know.” I handed her the letter. 

My wife sat up and read eagerly : 

‘ Mrs. Jasper Lance presents her ’ — why. 
Aunt Caroline used to know a Mrs. Jasper 
Lance — must be the same, I should think — 
* presents her compliments to Dr. Monroe, and 
will feel greatly obliged if he will call upon 
her in the course of the afternoon. Mrs. Lance 


THE NEW MOON. 


15 


makes this request at the suggestion of her 
medical attendant, Dr. Seton Smith, who has 
been very suddenly called out of town.* What 
a nuisance! Shall you have to look after 
Seton Smith’s patients again, in addition to all 
your own ? ” 

“ Oh no. Ballard takes all but the most im- 
portant cases. I had a telegram from Smith 
yesterday.” 

“Well, I think it’s a shame. You have too 
much to do already.” She studied the note 
from Hans Place. “ Mrs. Jasper Lance must 
be a horrid old woman from Aunt Caroline's 
account — but she didn’t write this.” 

“Why not?” I said, taking the offending 
letter. 

“ Oh, that’s young writing — young and 7tot 
an invalid’s — and a person I wouldn’t have for 
my secretary.” 

“ Very well, we’ll agree to look upon the 
writer as a suspicious character.” I opened the 


16 


THE NEW MOON. 


door. Get Mrs. Preston or Maria Baynton to 
go to church with you if you must go, but 
you’d much better have a brisk walk before tea 
and then come home.” 

“You know very well I’m not strong enough 
for brisk walks.” 

“ Then don’t go out at all. Or else drive.” 

“ And live like a Hottentot and never go to 
church at all, I suppose ! ” 

I closed the door behind me and ran down- 
stairs. I thought she called “Jiffy!” after me, 
but fearing may have been father to hearing. 


When I went into Mrs. Lance’s room that 
afternoon, I found, bending over the sick wo- 
man, a girl of about twenty, who looked up 
on my entrance, and came forward with quiet 
self-possession. 

“We are very grateful to you for coming,” 
she said. “ My grandmother had an unusually 


THE KEW MOON. 


17 


bad night.” I bowed, and turned to the sick- 
bed. 

But I had a distinct impression of the tall, 
well-carried figure in its close-fitting gown, 
the small head, a little overweighted, perhaps, 
with its masses of brown hair, and the general 
air of strength and capacity, which it was hard 
at first to reconcile with the beautiful young 
face and its look of innocence and inexperience. 

I have been under the care of Dr. Fournier 
of Paris, and Dr. Blokke of Vienna, and a 
dozen besides,” Mrs. Lance was saying, as she 
regarded me with shrewd distrust. “ Fve gone 
everywhere and done everything — except get 
better.” 

I drew a chair to her bedside and sat down. 

Every doctor I consult,” she went on re- 
sentfully, tells me all the others were wrong, 
and he can cure me — and I always believe 
him.” She pursed up her mouth with inde- 
scribable contempt. 


18 


THE NEW MOON. 


Her granddaughter was leaving the room. 

Don’t go, Dorothy,” Mrs. Lance said, with 
imperative peevishness. 

“ Only for a few minutes, grandmamma,” the 
girl replied calmly. 

The bell is there,” she said to me, indicat- 
ing an old-fashioned tasselled rope that hung 
by the head of the bed. Then she closed the 
door softly behind her, and I did not see her 
again until I went downstairs. She was wait- 
ing in the hall. 

‘'Do you think my grandmother will die?” 
she said, speaking low. 

“ She is very weak,” I said, and I noticed 
how the girl’s colour changed. 

“I understand,” she nodded; but her voice 
shook. 

“ Oh, I don’t mean there is no hope. Not 
at all. We must just keep up her strength for 
a week or two, and try a new course of treat- 
ment.” But the girl evidently saw that I was 


THE NEW MOON. 


19 


doubtful if I could pull her through. I told 
her of the prescription I had left upstairs, and 
asked if there was a competent nurse available. 

“ There is only me,” she said, “ but I will do 
all you tell me.” 

I did not stop to inquire into the situation. 
It was late, and I left hurriedly, promising to 
come the next day. 


My view of the case, as Mrs. Lance had 
prophesied, was at variance with that of my 
colleague. But my new plan of treatment 
gave her such relief that it was ultimately de- 
cided I should continue my constant and un- 
remitting care of the case, even after Seton 
Smith’s return. 

It did not take me long to discover that Miss 
Lance was the moving spirit in that great and 
lonely house, and it was to her that I confided 
all special directions. 


20 


THE NEW MOON. 


Mrs. Jasper Lance was difficult and crotch- 
ety. She never had been, and would not 
now be, nursed by a stranger.’^ Her own 
servants, she insisted, were quite competent — 
'^and Dorothy wasn’t a fool.” As a natural 
result, much of the burden of the situation fell 
on her capable granddaughter. 

After a few weeks, I found myself now and 
then timing my visit so that, after seeing my 
patient, I could be persuaded to have a cup 
of tea in the drawing-room with Miss Lance 
and her cousin, Mrs. Wallingford. This lady 
seemed to occupy an anomalous position in 
that extraordinary household. I never saw 
her in Mrs. Jasper Lance’s presence, and once 
when I referred in passing to some remark of 
Mrs. Wallingford’s, the calm-browed Dorothy 
frowned, and looked a reproof in my direction. 

Is that Wallingford woman here again?” 
said Mrs. Jasper Lance sharply. 

‘^Yes,” said Dorothy. 


THE NEW MOON. 


21 


“Humph! She must think Tm in a bad 
way this time. But you can tell her it’s 
no use. I don’t believe in death-bed senti- 
mentality. If I meet her in the kingdom of 
Heaven, I shall very likely box her ears; so 
she’d better keep out of my way.” 

“ She will not trouble you, grandmamma.” 

“ She does trouble me ! What is she hang- 
ing about my house for? ” 

There was a pause. I tore off the leaf I had 
been writing on, and drew the elastic band 
round my prescription tablet. 

“ She and Aunt Mary think it best that 
some one should be here with me while you’re 
ill.” 

“ Oh, they do, do they ? They can’t wait 
till I’m dead, before they arrange my affairs 
for me. You’ll be kind enough to tell Amelia 
Wallingford — no, wait!” She rang the bell at 
the bedside. 

“ Dr. Monroe is going, grandmamma,” said 


22 


THE NEW MOON. 


Dorothy, seeing that I stood a little perplexed, 
and very remorseful for having brought on the 
storm. 

** Good-morning — good-morning,” said the 
irate old woman. ** You and I will defeat the 
Wallingford and the whole crawling tribe. Dr. 
Monroe ! I never felt better in my life. But 
come to-morrow — come to-morrow.” 

As I passed out of the room, a maid went 
hurriedly in. Dorothy remained with her 
grandmother. 

The next day I learned the Wallingford had 
gone. 

After a while, the little talk with Miss Lance 
in the drawing-room, before presenting myself 
to my patient, or before taking my leave, be- 
came as much a matter of course as the teas 
which Mrs. Wallingford had instituted. At 
first I would stand by the mantelpiece, instinc- 
tively avoiding the familiar quite-at-home ” 
aspect I must have presented in an arm-chair, 


THE NEW MOON. 


23 


compelling myself to talk careful professional 
jargon, as if the beautiful Dorothy were a 
nurse in her novitiate, and I not waiting there 
simply and solely for that straight-in-the-eyes 
smile of hers that I knew would challenge and 
pursue me till I came again. 

From house to house it followed me, from 
bedside to bedside ; and when I closed my own 
door behind me, it was the one thing I could 
not have shut out had I tried. But I did not 
try. It was curious, perhaps, that, to a man of 
my somewhat stoical and altogether regular life, 
this new interest presented no conscious prob- 
lem, no coming danger. 


When my wife questioned me as to how 
that dreadful old woman in Hans Place ” was 
coming on, I asked, a little sharply perhaps, 
what she knew about Mrs. Lance. 

Aunt Caroline met her in Switzerland years 


24 


THE NEW MOON. 


ago, and used to tell us that of all the outra- 
geous old vixens that ever — ” 

“ I shouldn’t think she was more than sixty 
now. How many years ago was she supposed 
to be old as well as outrageous? 

Don’t be such a hair-splitter, Geoffrey!” 
My wife leaned on one elbow, and pulled the 
sofa-pillow into place. It was ten years ago, 
I should think, that they were all at Lucerne, 
anyhow; and when a woman has grandchildren 
she’s not usually called young.” 

Oh, she had grandchildren? ” 

'^Yes, a boy and a girl. The boy died. 
The girl lives with her, doesn’t she ? ” 

Yes; I suppose it’s the same.” 

Must be. Have you seen her? There’s 
only one. What’s she like ? ” 

“ Oh, a tall, pleasant sort of girl.” 

“Yes, that must be Dorothy. I suppose 
she’s getting on for thirty now.” 


“ Nearer twenty, I should say.” 


THE NEW MOON. 


25 


“ Oh, you think that because you’re a man.” 
I went over to the mantelpiece to get a 
paper I had left there. I stood turning over 
the leaves. 

” Oh, I forgot to ask you — have you ever 
seen the secretary?” Millicent said. 

What secretary ? ” 

The one who wrote the note asking you to 
go to Mrs. Lance.” 

No, I’ve never seen a secretary.” 

I wonder if the granddaughter didn’t write 

it?” 

Very likely.” 

Well, if she did. I’m glad I don’t know her. 
Jiffy, you’re exactly between Mimi and the 
fire.” 

Oh, am I? I didn’t notice.” I sat down. 
‘‘ What are you reading ? ” 

“The Deutsche Medicinische Wochenschrift"' 
“ You know that doesn’t convey anything to 


me. Tell me in English.” 


26 


THE NEW MOON. 


I translated the title of the particular article 
I was reading. 

“ The rugs are slipping down, Jiffy,” she in- 
terrupted. Come and — 

I went over and arranged them. She caught 
my hand and held it against her face. 

** Nice and warm you are.” 

And you’re like ice. Put your hands under.” 

‘^No, I won’t. It’s horridly unbecoming to 
have a nasty grey rug up under your chin.” 

Don’t be foolish,” I said. “ Come, let me 
cover you up.” I was conscious that she was 
looking pretty in her rather too delicate and 
waxen fashion, but I was used to that. ” Come,” 
I said, waiting to pull the rug up. 

“ No, not that horrid grey thing. Go up- 
stairs and get my white cashmeres. You know 
— they’re on the Italian chest.” 

I brought down a pile of fleecy shawls. She 
was sitting up arranging the lace at her throat 
when I came in. 


THE NEW MOON. 


27 


‘‘How do you like my peignoir?’* she said, 
looking down at the loose blue-silk gown she 
was wearing. 

“ Very nice. Something new? ” 

“ Now did you ever see it before? ” 

“ No, can’t say I — ” 

“Yes, you have.” 

“ Have I seen this ? ” I tried to look inter- 
ested. I was making a mental computation of 
how long it would be before I would be al- 
lowed to go back to the Theorie der Hereditdt 
der Lungenschwhidsucht. 

“ Look here.” She turned the loose sleeve 
back and showed a white lining with a little 
blue flower in it. “ Do you recognise that? ” 

“Yes; I think I do.” 

“ Well, I should hope so. I’ve worn it dozens 
of times. It’s my forget-me-not gown turned 
wrong side out.” 

“Oh!” I said. 

“ Yes ; I started to dress in a great hurry this 


28 


THE NEW MOON. 


evening in the dusk, and, before I knew it, I 
was putting it on wrong side out.’^ 

Oh well, it doesn’t look badly.” I began 
to spread out the shawls. 

” But don’t you understand ? It’s wrong side 
out — and it’s Friday.” 

Friday?” 

Yes. Horrid day, Friday. But it’s such 
good luck to get a thing on wrong side out, I 
don’t care if it is Friday, and I’ve started my new 
piece of embroidery. I thought I’d have to wait 
till to-morrow — ” She talked on, and I went 
back to my magazine after I had covered her up. 
Jiffy!” I didn’t answer. Geoffrey! ” 
Yes.” 

“ How long are you going to read that horrid 
paper? ” 

Only till Watson brings your beef-tea. 
Then we’ll go on with our novel.” ^ 

I do wish you wouldn’t read those German 
things in here.” 


THE NEW MOON. 


29 


*‘Why?” 

Dear me, what odd creatures men are!” 

How’s that? ” It was useless. The Woch- 
enschrift was worsted. I laid it aside. 

Now a woman would know in a minute 
that, unless she meant to be disagreeable, she 
mustn’t sit in the same room with her husband 
reading an ugly language that he didn’t know.” 

“ Oh, you don’t like it because it’s German.” 
I laughed a little, with dreary indulgence. 

Not in the least because it’s German, 
though it’s an atrocious language, but because 
I don’t know it. It’s like a wall between us as 
you sit there. It shuts me out.” 

'‘But suppose it was in French, or even 
English, you wouldn’t understand a medical 
magazine any better.” 

" Ah, but then I could see for myself that it 
wasn’t worth understanding.” 

" Oh, I see. And you’d like German ban- 


ished to the library ? ” 


30 


THE NEW MOON. 


Except when you want me to feel inferior 
and snubbed.” 

How well she knew how to impress her 
whims on my mind! I sat silent. 

“ I don’t know why we should wait for Wat- 
son,” I said, getting up and looking about for 
the book. 

** Aunt Caroline used to say old Mrs. Lance’s 
granddaughter was the only one who could 
manage her,” my wife said, apparently continu- 
ing her own train of thought. 

‘^Oh!” said I. ‘'Where were we?” I 
turned the pages of the amazing production 
my wife had asked me to read aloud. 

I was not in the habit of discussing my 
patients with Millicent, but the peculiar shrink- 
ing I felt at the prospect of hearing Mrs. Lance’s 
household criticised or even commented upon 
should have warned me. As a matter of fact, 
however, I was conscious of nothing but a sud- 
den gratitude towards my wife’s taste for light 


THE NEW MOON. 


31 


literature, and a new-born desire to read her 
favourite author aloud. I plunged with alacrity 
into Golgotha : a Romance of Heaven and 
Earth,” by the author of ‘"Anathema,” “As- 
tarte,” etc. 

“ Jiffy,” my wife interrupted after a moment, 
“ Mimi’s feet are cold. You didn’t tuck me up 
properly.” 

I laid down the book and rearranged the 
rugs. The front-door bell rang. 

“ Some horrid patient dying,” my wife said, 
with charitable apprehension, as she rubbed the 
palm of her hand on the back of the sofa. 

“What’s the matter?” I said, noticing the 
action. 

“ Palm itches. ‘ Rub it on wood and it’ll 
come to good.’ ” 

Hurd announced Mrs. Baynton, and Watson 
followed with the beef-tea. 

The two women greeted each other effusively. 

I gathered that if my wife had not rubbed her 
3 


32 


THE NEW MOON. 


hand on the sofa back it would not have been 
Mrs. Baynton at the door, but a messenger from 
some suffering patient of mine. 

We heard how Tom and Sarah and Kitty 
were, had our anxiety about the baby’s cold 
allayed, and were told how it was that Charlie’s 
headaches had prevented him from getting a 
scholarship. I sat meditating on the surprise 
and delight in store for society when some fond 
mother shall muster up courage to give as the 
reason for her darling’s scholastic failure, “ Stu- 
pidity, my dears, sheer stupidity.” 

Mrs. Baynton’s numerous and curiously dull 
family would keep the two ladies going till bed- 
time, I was well assured. I got up and laid 
Golgotha ” reverently down. 

“ I have some work to do, Millicent,” I said. 
I’ll leave you and Mrs. Baynton to discuss 
public schools. Good-night.” I held out my 
hand to my wife’s old friend. 

“Now just listen to him, Maria!” my wife 


THE NEW MOON. 


33 


said. I told you he’d taken to calling me 
Millicent before people. What makes you so 
horrid to me, Jiffy?” 

** Horrid ? Isn’t Millicent your name ? ” 

I hate it simply, and I’ve told you so till 
I’m sick and tired; and nobody ever called me 
Millicent in their lives, did they, Maria ? ” 

“ No ; I never heard you called anything but 
Mimi and Milly.” 

''There, Jiffy — what did I tell you?” 

" All I can say is your parents made a mis- 
take, although of course for a child it didn’t 
matter so much.” 

"You see! He wants to make out I’m a 
grandmother,” she turned to her friend almost 
crying. 

" Not at all, but I see no good reason for a 
man of thirty-seven and a woman of thirty- 
six—” 

"Jiffy!” my wife interrupted reproachfully. 

" I don’t see why they should cling to the 


34 


THE NEW MOON. 


names that were well enough when they were 
in their nurseries, any more than they should 
keep on wearing bibs.” 

I shall never call you anything but Jiffy 
except when you’re bad to me. If I’m not 
loving you at all, I’ll say Geoffrey.” 

I wished heartily that this small bone of con- 
tention had not been dragged out before Mrs. 
Baynton. I had the common masculine con- 
viction that these dismal scenes we should 
enact alone. I turned away to find my paper. 

“Jiffy, are you going to be a good boy?” 

I looked about the room forgetting for the 
moment what I wanted. 

“Jiffy, promise you won’t call me Millicent 
any more.” 

“ It’s a very nice name,” I said feebly ; “ I 
like using it.” 

“Very strange it’s taken you sixteen years 
to find it out. You think it’s horrid, don’t you, 
Maria?” 


THE NEW MOON. 


35 


Mrs. Baynton looked at me dubiously. 

I weren’t always a little afraid of you, 
Dr. Monroe, I’d say I agreed with your wife. 
‘ Millicent ’ doesn’t sound like her, some- 
how.” 

There, there,” cried my wife, with anima- 
tion, holding out her arms. ” Now you see. 
Come and tell Mimi you won’t call her any 
more horrid names.” 

I seized my Wocheiischrift and retreated. 

The next afternoon as I was going out my 
wife asked me when I would be back. 

“ In time to dress for dinner,” I answered 
carelessly. 

“Well, I should hope so! But that means 
you won’t get home till about seven o’clock.” 

“ Oh, it may not be later than six.” 

“You’re never home to tea now — you’ve 
been getting later and later.” 

“ Not always. Wasn’t it only the day before 
yesterday that I had the pleasure of finding the 


36 


THE NEW MOON. 


entire Baynton family gathered round your tea- 
table ? ” 

Now, Jilfy, you mustn’t take dislikes to my 
friends.” 

I didn’t say I disliked them.” 

“But you do. And you go without your 
tea sometimes rather than meet them — such 
dears as the Bayntons are, too.” 

“ A doctor can’t keep very regular hours.” 

“You used always to come home and have 
tea with your Mimi.” 

“Yes, I used to have no practice. But I’ll 
see if I can get through earlier to-day.” 

“ Yes, do. Jiffy darling. And if you haven’t 
time to come all the way home, mind you have 
your tea somewhere.” 

“ Oh yes. That’s what I do.” 


As I came downstairs from seeing Mrs. Lance 
that afternoon, Dorothy opened the library 


THE NEW MOON. 


37 


door. She stood there smiling up at me with 
an open book in her arms. 

“ I thought it sounded like your step,” she 
said. How early you are ! Is grandmamma 
worse? ” 

No, just the same ; but I’m obliged to get 
home as soon as possible.” 

Can’t you come in just a moment? ” 

I buttoned up my coat with a business-like 
air and regretted I could not. My house- 
keeper has a very bad diphtheritic sore throat ; 
she needs watching.” 

‘‘ Oh, then, please,” she said, looking very 
earnest, I wonder if you’ll do me a great 
kindness? Could you lend me Mercier’s ^Ner- 
vous System and the Mind ’ if I’m very careful 
of it?” 

^^Mercier!” I echoed. ‘‘What do you want 
with him? ” 

“ Oh, I’m reading up nerves now,” she said, 
‘‘ and I’ve only got Maudsley here in the 


38 


THE NEW MOON. 


library, and one or two very old-fashioned au- 
thorities.” 

‘‘ Why are you reading up nerves ? ” 

‘^Just because I like knowing something 
about it. I’ve always wanted to. I haven’t 
said anything about it, because — because — well, 
people would understand it better if it were 
fancy-work, you know, and I wouldn’t like to 
be thought a blue-stocking. If grandmamma 
were to get well, or if — if — I were left alone. 
I’d go to Germany and really study. There’s 
nothing in the world so fascinating as biology. 
If I were a man. I’d give my life to it.” 

Her eyes were very bright, her face was 
for the moment like an enthusiastic school- 
boy’s. 

I’ll bring you Mercier to-morrow,” I said, 
and if that doesn’t satisfy you. I’ll lend you a 
book I’ve just been reading — Ribot’s ‘ L’Here- 
dite Psychologique,’ ” and I laughed. But she 
thanked me gravely, and said good-bye. 

Well, I lent her Mercier and Bastian and 


THE NEW MOON. 


39 


Wundt. I gave up taking Mrs. Lance in the 
general round, and used to take Dorothy and 
a cup of tea late in the afternoon on my way 
home. She devoured the technical books I 
lent her, and, still more surprising, she digested 
them. To talk to her about them and her own 
conclusions with regard to the questions they 
raised came to be the keenest intellectual stimu- 
lus of my days. Of course, as time went on, 
the inevitable happened. We talked less of 
mental science, scarcely at all of Mrs. Lance, 
and very much of ourselves. One occasion 
that dwells in my memory with peculiar vivid- 
ness is a certain late sunshiny afternoon in the 
drawing-room at Hans Place, when Dorothy 
set down her untasted cup of tea and rushed to 
the piano to run over the Fantasia in F minor, 
which she had just been hearing Paderewski play. 
I had not been able to recall it clearly, and she 
could not rest till she had brought it back to me. 
She played with enthusiasm, with a new glow 
in her style, ejaculating every now and then: 


40 


THE NEW MOON. 


Oh, this is where he was so wonderful — 
wonderful — ” 

'' O Dr. Monroe, you can’t conceive what 
an inspired being that man is — ” And a 
moment later : 

“ He plays like a god. It’s sacrilege for any 
one else to touch Chopin. Oh ! it was here he 
got that marvellous, half-delirious effect of — ” 

Fast and furious the chords fell down. The 
girl’s cheeks took on a deeper colour, and her 
eyes shone like great jewels as they glanced 
along the notes. I lay back in my arm-chair 
listening, looking at her — yielding up my 
senses to the languorous new delight in subtly 
blended beauty. 

I dare say I thought I was listening to 
Chopin. It is not in the scheme of things that 
a man should know at such a moment that he 
is sunning himself in the beauty of a woman — 
that the music is mixed with the light in her 
eyes, the play of white fingers, and the sway 


THE NEW MOON. 


41 


of a lithe sweet body. He is not to know, ap- 
parently — at least he is not to remember — that 
Art herself is handmaiden to the mighty 
mother, and that Music and Poetry are mute 
or merely stammerers until they sing us Epi- 
thalamium. 

As I sat there looking at the flushed sweet 
face, the light changed. A slanting sunbeam 
tangled itself in her hair. It’s not brown 
after all,” I thought dreamily ; it’s russet and 
gold.” 

There!” her voice was chiming through 
the last notes. *^You will never know in the 
least what that is like till you hear Paderewski 
play it.” 

I smiled. 

“ I never liked it so much before to-day,” I 
answered. 

“ It’s very odd,” she said, coming back to 
the tea-table, and standing meditatively with 
her hands clasped behind her, it’s one of the 


42 


THE NEW MOON. 


oddest things in the world, how suddenly a 
familiar thing will take on a new face. Once 
or twice lately, Fve felt that I must have been 
half blind and nearly deaf all my life — until 
now.” 

“ That feeling comes usually out of some 
crisis. If some one near to us is in danger, or 
dies, or some disaster has put an edge on sen- 
sation, or — ” 

The girl’s quick glance made me pause with- 
out knowing why. Her eyes travelled away 
again, and a soft vague light came over her 
face. 

Some disaster,” she repeated, “ or great 
gladness, or any awakening, I suppose.” Her 
speech had the unfinished outline of un-self- 
conscious thought. I remember how her shift- 
ing moods puzzled me that day. 

She sat down and lifted her tea-cup to her 
lips. 


“Ugh! Quite cold.” 


THE NEW MOON. 


43 


Of course. What did you expect?” 

‘‘ And you won’t let me have what has stood 
in the pot?” 

I don’t prescribe tannin in your case.” 

“ I’ll have some milk and cream.” She filled 
a cup. 

** Much better for you,” I said, with satis- 
faction. 

Do you agree with whoever it is who says 
tea and coffee help to fill the insane asy- 
lums?” 

“ I don’t know that I go as far as that. 
Strong tea is certainly bad for the nerves and 
the digestion — ” 

** If it’s bad for the nervous system it must 
be more or less bad for the mind, mustn’t it? ” 

** Why are you so interested in everything 
that affects the mind?” 

‘‘ Don’t you think everybody ought to be?” 

You are particularly so.” 


Yes; I’m particularly so.” 


44 


THE NEW MOON. 


The clock on the mantelpiece struck its 
tinkling bell six times. 

‘‘You must tell me sometime why,” I said, 
getting up hurriedly. 

“ Yes ; ril tell you — sometime.” She smiled, 
and gave me her hand. 


That evening my wife was full of some 
gossip that Mrs. Baynton had brought her 
about old Mrs. Lance’s family quarrels — how 
her relations said she had made a drudge of 
her granddaughter, and turned her into a sick- 
nurse. I said, from what I had seen of Miss 
Lance, I thought she was capable of taking 
care of herself. 

“ You’re horridly unsympathetic, Jiffy. Why, 
Mrs. Lance has cut her off from all young so- 
ciety, and won’t even let her go to church.” 

“ Are you sure Miss Lance wants to go to 
church? ” 


THE NEW MOON. 


45 


Of course she does. Most people are not 
such heathens as you. Maria says her Kitty 
has called there twice lately with George 
Templeton, to take Dorothy to the church 
parade, and — ” 

“ I thought you said * to church ’ ? ” 

** Oh well, it’s the same thing — and each 
time Dorothy Lance had to admit she couldn’t 
leave her old tyrant of a grandmother. Now, 
isn’t it outrageous?” 

What do you want me to read to-night ? ” 
I said. 

Oh, we’ll go on with that great fat Thack- 
eray that you think I ought to like. I can’t read 
it. Go on where we left off.” I found the book. 

If I knew Mrs. Lance, I’d just tell her — ” 

Here’s the mark,” I interrupted, and began 
to read. 

‘^Haven’t you got on a new waistcoat?” 
Millicent said, in the middle of the first 
paragraph. 


46 


THE NEW MOON. 


‘^Eh? Oh! Yes.” 

"'Awfully pretty. But you can’t have it 
washed with those buttons in it — can you ? ” 

"No; they come out.” I lifted the book to 
my eyes again. 

" Put on with rings ? ” 

" I believe so.” I went on reading. 

She sat up and leaned over on my knees, 
examining my buttons. Presently I heard her 
whispering, as she touched one after another, 
" Friendship — Love — Indifference — Hate — 
Friendship — Love — ” 

" Dear Jiffy ! ” She put her hand across the 
place I was reading. " Are you sure you love 
me?” 

" I’m sure I can’t read through your hand.” 

"Tell me. Jiffy, when you were a child did 
you use to count your buttons to see what you 
were going to be ? ” 

" No, can’t say I did.” The lamp was smok- 
ing a little. I turned down the wick. 


THE NEW MOON. 


47 


‘^Well, it was very neglectful of you,’* she 
laughed — “ saves a lot of uncertainty. You 
begin at the top and say, ^ Rich man. Poor 
man. Beggar man, Thief, Doctor, Lawyer, Mer- 
chant, Chief,’ over and over till you come to 
the end of a boy’s buttons. The last one tells 
you his fate.” 

I see.” I went on. 

“ Now, why is it. I’d like to know,” she in- 
terrupted, with sudden petulance, why is it 
my hair isn’t the colour of your beard? You 
don’t want a goldie-brown beard — all you care 
about is that it should be close cropped and 
very pointed — now isn’t it so? ” 

The lamplight fell on her delicate childish 
face, and on the carefully dressed thin hair 
that was faded and lustreless. She wore it 
down almost to her eyebrows, and the thin 
tracery was held firmly to its place by a fine 
net. The arrangement at the back was cov- 
ered with a net too. At a distance her 


4 


48 


THE NEW MOON. 


head looked as if it were carved out of new 
wood. 

I looked past my wife to another face that I 
knew by heart — a face with strong generous 
lines, and deep-set grey eyes that to think 
of set one’s pulse to keeping quicker time. 
Above my wife’s elaborate head I seemed to 
see Dorothy’s piled- up masses of waving chest- 
nut-hair that kinked ” from the roots, and 
left her forehead white and unshadowed, ex- 
cept by an occasional wild little lock. I re- 
membered how the late sun that very afternoon 
had come slanting in through the drawing-room 
window in Hans Place, and had picked out 
glints of unsuspected red in the thick brown 
masses. How white she was behind the ears! 

Penny for your thoughts, Jiffy.” 

I started. 

Oh ! I was thinking about hair. What a 
lot of character there is in it!” 

“Just what Madame Estelle the spiritualist 


THE NEW MOON. 


49 


says. Her control can tell everything about a 
person from the merest scrap of hair.” 

I made an impatient movement to resume. 

But if I were you,” she buzzed away con- 
tentedly, “ I wouldn’t be so proud of my 
goldie-brown locks and my angelic character.” 

“ See here. I’m going back to the library if 
you don’t want me to read. I’ve got a lot of 
work waiting — ” 

Ugh! What a dreadful cross boy!” She 
raised herself up and looked at me reproach- 
fully. I haven’t seen you look so ferocious 
since the day you burnt my dream-book. I 
shall ask Madame Estelle if goldie-brown hair 
isn’t a sign of a violent temper.” 

Watson came in with a small tray. She placed 
it on my wife’s lap, and went noiselessly out. 

I began to read rapidly. 

Jiffy, don’t gallop through it like that. It 
makes me nervous. Where’s the salt? Now 
that idiotic Watson has never brought me — ” 


50 


THE NEW MOON. 


Yes, here it is.” I turned down the corner 
of the fringed napkin and revealed a little salt- 
cellar. I took some up in the spoon and held 
it towards the bouillon. 

“No, no, no!” My wife withdrew the cup 
so hastily that she slopped some of the smok- 
ing contents over her shawl. “ Now just see 
what you’ve made me do. Really^ Geoffrey!” 

“ I’m very sorry.” I pulled out my hand- 
kerchief and wiped the cashmere dry. “ But 
why did you jerk the cup away? ” 

“You don’t suppose I’d let you help me to 
salt, do you ? ” 

“ Oh,” I said, comprehending at last, “ I 
forgot.” 

“ Well, I wish you wouldn’t.” 

“ And I wish you’d outgrow that nonsense. 
It’s gaining on you so it will make your life 
utterly wretched.” 

“ It’s because I don’t want to be utterly 
wretched that I won’t let you do unlucky 


THE NEW MOON. 


51 


things. If you help me to salt, you help me 
to sorrow,” she said gravely, shaking the spoon 
over her cup. There’s only one thing in the 
world more unlucky.” 

“Stuff!” said I, trying to find the place I 
had lost again in the book. 

“And that’s spilling the salt on the cloth.” 
She returned the spoon to the tiny cellar, bend- 
ing down to see if any had fallen on the napkin. 

“ Ah well,” I sighed resignedly, “ in any 
case you can put things right by throwing 
some over your shoulder.” I had the remem- 
brance before me of her frequent performance 
of the pantomime. 

“Yes, but you don’t always notice. Judas 
didn’t.” 

“ Didn’t he?” 

** Didn't he! As if you didn’t know!” 

“No; how should I know?” 

“ Good heavens, Geoffrey ! didn’t he betray 


our Lord? ” 


52 


THE NEW MOON. 


"‘So I’m told, but what has that to do 
with—” 

“ Anybody would think you’d never heard 
of the Last Supper. But you might, at least, 
remember the Leonardo.” 

“I do.” 

“Well, then, you must have seen that the 
salt-cellar by Judas is overturned.” 

“ Is it really? I never noticed.” 

“ No,” said my wife a little grimly; “ neither 
did Judas.” 

I began to read. “ Set this down, will 
you ? ” my wife said presently. I relieved her 
of the tray. 

“ I suppose Dorothy Lance will have all that 
old heathen’s money,” said my wife. 

“ Strikes me you’re not very much engrossed 
in the " Adventures of Philip,’ ” I remarked. 

“Just because I say something now and 
then? That’s absurd, as I’ve always told you. 
You used to be dreadfully tyrannical about 


THE NEW MOON. 


53 


that. I believe it’s a common failing among 
men. They make reading aloud such an awful 
ceremony that their poor wives would as soon 
interrupt a sermon in church as dare say a 
word. But if you’re reading for pleasure — ” 
It’s most people’s pleasure to pay attention 
if they care for the book.” 

” Now, Jiffy, you’re going to be horrid 
again.” 

** No, I don’t think so,” I said, laughing 
shortly. I’m quite willing to talk or to read, 
whichever you like.” 

“ Well, go on with that stupid Philip. 
There’s nothing else.” 

My wife read a vast amount of literature, 
more or less light, and read so rapidly and con- 
stantly it was sometimes a problem how to 
keep her supplied. On the ground of ill-health 
she had long ago given up going out among 
her friends, and by degrees her acquaintances 
fell away from her. Indeed, her only regular 


54 


THE NEW MOON. 


visitor now was her distant cousin, Mrs. Bayn- 
ton, or some other member of the Baynton 
family. Of course she had every care and at- 
tention, but her days were bare of responsibil- 
ity or healthful activity. I used to shudder 
when I stopped to think what life must be 
under such conditions. 

Evenings at home were so absolutely uni- 
form that, but for subsequent events, those I 
have described, and yet another, would have 
faded out of my memory. This other was a 
certain Sunday evening when Dorothy Lance 
was even more persistently and vividly present 
to me than usual. I had fallen into the habit 
of sitting with a book in my hand, staring into 
vacancy, seeing nothing but that calm, beauti- 
ful face — waiting for the eyelids to lift and the 
mouth to smile. On this Sunday evening I 
was sitting in an arm-chair before my library 
fire waiting for the miracle to come to pass, 
when the door opened and my wife came in. 


THE NEW MOON. 


55 


*'What is it?” I said, jumping to my feet, 
for she seldom or never followed me here. 
She was not looking ill, but rather unusually 
animated. She held something out to me be- 
tween her thumb and finger. 

‘‘Do you see the stranger?” 

“ The what ? ” I stooped down to look closer. 
I saw a faint gleam of white filaments. 

“It’s dandelion-down, don’t you see?” She 
came and held it under the student-lamp. 
“ I saw it coming slowly across the hall from 
the front door. It means a stranger coming 
into our life. I wanted to see whether it was 
after you or me. I’ve been sitting out there 
under the hall lamp for half an hour.” I put 
her into my chair. In spite of her shawls and 
wraps her teeth were chattering. “ It came 
straight towards your door, Geoffrey. It’s 
somebody coming for you.” 

“Well, it will be a very unwelcome patient 
who sends for me to-night.” I sat down in a 


56 


THE NEW MOON. 


low chair and poked the fire. ‘‘ Never saw 
such weather for this time of the year.” 

I don’t believe it’s a patient. It’s some- 
body who is coming into our life.” 

Dorothy’s face flitted before my eyes. I 
poked the fire angrily. Was this mania for 
omens infecting my imagination too? 

“ I’ll tell you, Jiffy. We’ll burn the stranger 
for a witch.” She leaned over and took the 
poker out of my hands. 

You’ll put the fire out if you — ” 

** I’m not going to poke, only to prop the 
poker on the top bar of the grate. So ! Now 
lay the tongs across. Now that’ll keep the 
witches out of the house. Sign of the cross, 
you see! Now we’ll burn the stranger.” She 
leaned farther over, opened her thumb and 
finger, and dropped the down just over the 
flames. It wavered an instant, and then flew 
out directly into my face. 

''Ha! Didn’t I tell you it had come for 


THE NEW MOON. 


57 


you?” my wife said laughing. She snatched 
at it with an affectation of ferocity. “ Come 
and be burnt, you witch.” She held it towards 
the flames again. The moment she released it 
out it came once more, brushing my face with 
its fairy wings. 

Well, I hope you’re satisfied now,” my wife 
said, looking at me with wide, startled eyes. 

You see it won't give you up.” 

No,” I said, not while I sit in the draught 
between the door and the fireplace.” 

Well, we’ll see. The third time is the 
charm.” She took the winged seed again, and 
dropped it behind the bank of flaming coals. 

''There, it flew up the chimney!” she 
screamed. " Jiffy, it was a witch, and it’s got 
away ! ” 

" I didn’t see it go up,” I said; but by some 
queer mental antic I saw my day-dreams sud- 
denly in a grotesque new light. 

" Geoffrey, I’m all of a shiver. Wasn’t it 


58 


THE NEW MOON. 


uncanny the way it seemed to fly to you for 
protection ? ’’ 

I jumped up and began to pace the room. 

” I wish I could make you realise,” I said, 
** how terribly you are weakening the fibre of 
your mind, and even your physical health, by 
all this nonsense.” 

Now, Jiffy, don’t begin to lecture. You’ll 
make my head ache, and that won’t do my 
fibres the least good.” 

^'No; seriously — seriously, these supersti- 
tions are eating into your life. I don’t believe 
there’s any one in the world such a martyr to 
signs and auguries as you are.” 

Oh, all nice women are superstitious. It’s 
only the horrid unfeminine creatures who are 
superior to it.” 

‘‘ No ; you may depend upon it, nobody 
carries it to the extent that you do. How you 
ever heard of all those damnable omens is a 
mystery to me.” 


THE NEW MOON. 


59 


Geoffrey, please don’t swear. It’s much 
better to be superstitious than to be irritable 
and use bad language.” 

“ But tell me how you ever got hold of such 
a lot of — ” I checked myself. '*Who told 
you all these things?” 

Oh, my old mulatto nurse told me a lot of 
them, and — ” 

Yes, of course. It begins in the cradle. I 
see. Well — and then ? ” 

Oh, I collect them. I get a new one every 
now and then in books or from people. Wat- 
son told me about wishing on a load of straw, 
and then, you know ” — she went on in a quite 
different tone, animated, almost gay — after 
you’ve made your wish, you’ve got to shut 
your eyes, and not open them till the straw 
is out of sight. If you catch a glimpse of 
it after you’ve wished, you’ll lose what you 
asked for. One of my Canadian cousins told 
me how to tell fortunes with apple-seeds, and 


60 


THE NEW MOON. 


about naming an eyelash. You know that 
one?’* 

She appealed to me with the good-humour 
of one connoisseur presenting another with a 
valuable specimen. See if I can pull one out 
without hurting myself.” 

“ Stop ! ” I cried. I don’t want — ” 

There! — there it is! Now I’ll show you.” 
She laid the single lash on the back of her 
hand. I turned away impatiently — there was 
no making the slightest impression on her. 

“ Now come, Jiffy, you must help.” 

‘‘ You know quite well I’ll never help you 
with any such tomfoolery.” 

Oh, don’t be horrid. Look here, help me to 
wish, and I’ll listen to your lecture afterwards. 
Now, I never made you such a handsome offer 
before. Come.” I stood with my back to her, 
looking at the titles on a row of medical books. 
She pulled my sleeve. If it’s for my good to 
be lectured, you oughtn’t to neglect it. And 


THE NEW MOON. 


61 


this is the condition. You make a fist — so.” 
She doubled up my fingers. Now, there’s 
the eyelash on the back of my hand — see? 
Now I’ll name it : * Geoffrey Monroe. Do you 
love Mimi?’ Now you must knock my hand 
up in the air from underneath with your fist. 
If the eyelash stays on my hand, it means yes. 
If it flies away, it means no, and you’re a very 
bad, wicked boy, and I’ve found you out.” 

I turned and faced her, laying my hands on 
her shoulders. 

** Will you ever grow up and be a woman ? ” 
Oh, you’ve knocked the winker off!” 

“ Sit down here and let me tell you some- 
thing.” I put her into my chair and drew up 
another. ” First, should you take me for a 
superstitious person ? ” 

” Fhu ? ” she laughed. ” Why, you wouldn’t 
even say ' Bread and butter ’ on our honey- 
moon when you’d gone one side of a tree 
or a lamp-post, and I the other — although I 


62 


THE NEW MOON. 


told you over and over again if a thing like 
that came between us as we walked, we’d be 
sure to quarrel. No, dear, no one could accuse 
you of — ” 

Well, then, let me tell you that even I find 
myself ' infected by your constant dwelling on 
these things. I begin to notice them — that’s 
the first step. It is to many a case of ' First 
endure, then pity, then embrace.’ Of course I 
can fight against being influenced, but to be 
conscious of having to shake one’s self out of 
superstition is an evidence of a lapse from 
sanity. You have taught me how jealously we 
should guard this delicate mechanism.” I 
tapped her on the temple. ‘"We can’t afford 
to trifle with it. It takes horrible revenge on 
us for any tampering. The moment you give 
hospitality to a thought, you are more or less 
at its mercy. With my reason, I know that 
when a black cat comes into the house I have 
no more cause to expect good luck than I have 


THE NEW MOON. 


63 


to fear the reverse if a bird flies into the room ; 
but—” 

“ Oh yes,” ejaculated my wife, “ don’t you 
remember at Tours — ” 

** No, I don’t want to remember, and I 
don’t want you to remember. I begin to get 
glimpses of the danger of all this kind of thing 
even to the sound and sane. There is some- 
thing monstrous in the tyranny of thought. 
No one’s nerves are proof against association. 
You can’t be too careful of the kind of images 
you admit into your mind. * Whatsoever 
things are tme, whatsoever things are honest, 
whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things 
are lovely, whatsoever things are of good re- 
port; if there be any virtuey if there be any 
praise y think on these things' ” 

Dear me, Geoffrey, you ought to have been 
a parson.” 

I had risen, and stood with my back to the 

fire, speaking with all the conviction and 
5 


64 


THE NEW MOON. 


emphasis of one who brings himself at last to 
say a thing that long has lain in his heart. 

I tell you,” I went on, I would have 
that prescription given to every creature in 
the kingdom. It is the first condition of 
health.” 

Isn’t it out of the Bible? ” 

Yes; but it’s excellent hygiene, for all that. 
You haven’t understood my feeling about su- 
perstition, Milly. It’s not that I have a mere 
prejudice against it. It’s not because it’s a 
remnant of barbarism, and a laughing-stock to 
science. It’s because it is enervating, and 
makes for disease.” 

“Then half the women in London are in a 
bad way.” 

“ Far be it from me to contest that.” 

“ It was awfully difficult when I first came to 
London to hear of a really good fortune-teller. 
Now they’re as thick as blackberries.” 


THE NEW MOON. 


65 


I don’t know what you mean by a really 
good fortune-teller. But how do you come to 
know they have increased? ” 

She did not answer. But I knew the look 
on her face. She was a truthful woman, who 
called in obstinate silence at times when some 
of her sex would have prevaricated. 

“You look at the advertisements,” I said. 
She nodded, but I saw she had other sources 
of information. “ Come, we are discussing the 
thing frankly,” I said. “ How do you come to 
be so sure that good fortune-tellers are as thick 
as blackberries in London?” 

“ Well,” she said hesitatingly, “ Aunt Caro- 
line said I wasn’t to tell you, because you were 
crotchety. She knows scores, and used to 
take me. She was always hearing of some 
new person who was better than all the rest. 
They charge frightfully now. There’s a lot of 
money made that way in London — oh ! a 


66 


THE NEW MOON. 


frightful lot. But, you see, there’s some 
idiotic law about obtaining money under false 
pretences, and it’s kept dark.” 

I walked up and down the room. 

** It has probably always existed in one form 
or another,” I meditated aloud. “ Astrology, 
at least, has had its day and ceased to be.” 

“ Oh, don’t you flatter yourself!” My wife 
had apparently developed an interest in mak- 
ing the case out as bad as possible. It was a 
way of excusing herself. I know three as- 
trologers at this moment in London, and four 
in Paris.” 

“ I hope you don’t keep up the acquain- 
tance,” I said rather angrily. 

‘'You know quite well I’ve been ill, and 
haven’t gone anywhere. Besides, horoscopes 
are quite dull, compared to palmistry, and 
planchette, and crystal-gazing, and having 
your character told by handwriting or a lock 
of your hair.” 


THE NEW MOON. 


67 


“Good heavens!” I ejaculated, in hopeless 
disgust at the catalogue. 

I took a turn up and down the room. 

“ And one of the queerest things in the 
whole business is, that you are what is called a 
religious woman.” 

“ Queer ! You mean with such a discourag- 
ing husband, I suppose,” she said sharply. 

“ I mean in spite of your heathen pro- 
clivities.” 

“What are you talking about?” 

I stopped before her. 

“ That you should be a professing Christian, 
and a more or less responsible human being, 
and yet totally unable to see how the rank 
paganism and fetishism of your superstition 
stultifies your religious creed 1 ” 

“ Oh, you don’t understand these things. 
You can’t be expected to. You’re always 
reading atheistical German magazines. You 
never go to church. How you happened to 


68 


THE NEW MOON. 


know that text of St. Paul’s I can’t make out, 
for you never read your Bible. If you did, 
you’d see that a Christian is bound to believe 
in ghosts and visions and dreams and witches. 
I dare say you don’t even know where the 
Witch of Endor lived.” 

“ No, and I don’t care.” 

“Why, she lived at Endor, you silly,” and 
she laughed triumphantly. Her good-humour 
was fully restored. “You see, people in so- 
ciety,” she went on, “ are so much more in- 
terested in ghosts and things than they used 
to be.” 

“ That’s partly the fault of the Society for 
Psychical Research. They’ve fostered and 
dignified people’s morbid illusions and in- 
cipient insanities until the person without a 
ghost story, or an augury fulfilled, has felt out 
of fashion. Psychical Research should never 
be popularised. It’s full of peril to the 
strongest, and the idea of putting such a 


THE NEW MOON. 


69 


two-edged sword into the hands of the clumsy 
and ignorant was the inspiration of a mind 
unhinged.” 

You can’t say the Psychical Research peo- 
ple invented palmistry parties.” 

‘"What do you mean?” 

Oh, didn’t you know? They’re the great 
rage in London now. Lots of the smart 
people give them ; an afternoon tea, you 
know, and a palmist in a powder-room, or 
some little place by herself, and the guests go 
in one by one, and come out all creepy and 
delightful, after hearing the most astounding 
things.” 

*'Millicent” — I stood before her — 'Mon’t 
you care enough to please me, to make a fight 
against this superstition ? ” 

Why, I don’t go to the palmistry parties — 
worse luck. Haven’t I just told you they’ve 
only come in since I’ve been ill?” 

""No, no, I don’t mean the parties only; I 


70 


THE NEW MOON. 


mean the whole wretched business — signs, 
symbols, character- reading, dreams — ” 

” Don’t be idiotic, Geoffrey ; you can’t give 
up dreams if they don’t give you up.” 

^'But you can give up dwelling on them. 
You can give up telling them.” 

” That’s merely dull. That doesn’t change 
anything.” 

Ah, but it does ! I sometimes think noth- 
ing exists except by virtue of being expressed. 
Certainly an idea has no independent life until 
we deliver ourselves of it. The moment it is 
born into speech, it goes out in the world to 
work its way and propagate, and we have 
added to the sum of good or ill. If we can’t 
follow St. Paul’s advice and think only things 
that are true and of good report, we can at 
least refrain from soiling other minds by giving 
them of our dust and ashes.” 

Jiffy, you’re dreadfully extravagant. All 
this because I burnt a thistle-down! Wasn’t 


THE NEW MOON. 


71 


a bit of use, either,” she said, getting up and 
yawning, with her eye on the fire. There is 
a stranger on the bar now. Good-night, 
Jiffy; you’ve made my head ache with your 
sermonising.” 


I REACHED the house in Hans Place the 
next day as usual, about four o’clock, in the 
midst of a steady downpour. As I stood 
waiting for the butler to open the door I felt a 
momentary lifting of the spirit. All day I had 
been hag-ridden by a vague new impression. 
The daily round, old anxieties and new failures 
loomed mountain-high, and there was some- 
thing else in the background, something that 
my mind refused to face — a sense of complica- 
tion and of strain. 

My visit to Mrs. Lance’s room was not pro- 
longed. She was in a very capricious mood, 
and wanted me to try some new medicine she 


72 


THE NEW MOON. 


had been reading about. I compromised, 
promising to try something new that I had 
been reading about. I had waked her out of 
the best sleep she had had for forty-eight 
hours, she said. I left her with the feeling 
that everybody in the world was in the vilest 
of tempers, myself, of course, included. I 
would go home and shut myself up. 

I came downstairs wondering why Dorothy 
had not appeared as usual in Mrs. Lance’s 
room. 

“She’s in the doldrums too, I suppose.” I 
crossed the hall, turning my head about for a 
glimpse of her, fearing I should see her with 
the day’s cloud upon her face — fearing I 
should not see her at all. I opened the front 
door and saw that the rain had turned to fog. 

“Brr-rr!” I shivered. 

“ Dr. Monroe,” a low voice called. I turned. 
Dorothy was standing on the drawing-room 
threshold with a blaze of light behind her. 


THE NEW MOON. 


73 


‘‘ Are you called somewhere ? ” she said, her 
look of welcome and expectancy fading. 

“ N — no; I was going home.” 

“ Oh, but please don’t — not just yet. I 
wanted particularly to see you to-day. Just 
come and see what a splendid fire I have in 
here.” 

She stepped back and I looked in. She had 
had the curtains drawn, the lamps lit, and a 

Christmas fire ” was roaring in the wide 
grate, picking out the silver tea-urn, and 
lighting up the pale sea-green china on the 
low tea-table. 

“You are certainly very comfortable.” 

“ When the weather doesn’t behave, one has 
only to shut it out.” She closed the door. 
“ Now! It doesn’t exist so far as we are con- 
cerned. Sit there.” She rolled my chair, as 
she called it, to the fire. “Now you shall 
have tea.” 

I took off my overcoat and established my- 


74 


THE NEW MOON. 


self by the table, saying something perfunctory 
about the Arctic weather. 

“ There’s one thing I like particularly about 
the English climate,” she said— “ it’s almost al- 
ways cold enough to have a fire. And a fire 
is a thing of beauty and a joy for ever.” 

‘‘This one is,” I said, looking at the blaze. 
She handed me my tea. 

“ People don’t half appreciate open fires. 
The moment they can do it, without dying of 
cold, they stuff up their chimneys, and put dull 
screens and things before their grates; they 
don’t seem to recognise that they can have 
nothing on earth so decorative in a room as a 
fire. Now just look round us, for instance. 
Here are all these pictures and bronzes, and 
the Turkey carpets — good ones, too! — and yet 
nothing in the room is so valuable to its 
general effect as the fire.” 

“ Particularly on a day like this,” I amended. 


THE NEW MOON. 


75 


and drank my tea with a growing sense of 
comfort. 

“ Tve been out to-day in spite of the 
weather. Went to the stores for grandmam- 
ma. Do you ever go to the stores?” 

** Not often. I believe my housekeeper goes 
every week or so.” 

“They’re not agreeable resorts on a wet 
day. I came home cold and miserable.” 

“ I hope you changed your things,” I said, 
looking down to see if I could discover the 
state of her shoes. 

“ Yes, of course, and I put on my cheerful 
slippers.” She thrust out a narrow foot shod 
in bright red morocco. 

“ Cheerful! ” I said, with a little start. “ I 
should say hilarious even,” and we both 
laughed loud and long. 

“They are beautiful,” she said, looking at 
them with affection, “ and whenever I’m at all 


76 


THE NEW MOON. 


low in my mind, I fly to them as topers do to 
the bottle. The moment I get my red slippers 
on Fm restored — Fm ready to dance and 
sing.*' She patted the thick carpet softly with 
her pointed red toes. 

Do you have little fads about your shoes 
and slippers?” she said. 

“ Fads? ” I echoed, passing my cup for more 
tea. What kind of fads?” 

*‘Well, don’t you feel, for instance, that the 
kind of shoes you’re wearing affects your 
moods? ” 

“ Most certainly, if they pinch.” 

“ No, no, I don’t mean that at all. I mean 
if I wear patent leather I have a discreet, 
almost mincing little walk ; if I have on brown 
Russia I strike out freely into a good country 
stride ; if I have on white satin I instantly feel 
a kind of elegance stealing over me — you 
mustn’t laugh — I positively do feel that white- 
satin slippers impose a sort of grace on one; 


THE NEW MOON. 


77 


and any coloured-satin shoe makes me pine to 
be dancing.” 

“ And red morocco the same ? ” 

“ No, no, not the same thing at all. I don’t 
want to dance steps in red morocco, but just to 
whirl about and — and be cheerful.” 

We laughed again, as contented people do 
on small provocation. 

If I were a doctor I’d prescribe bright red 
shoes for all my melancholy patients,” she said. 

You’re very determined in your crusade 
against depression. Is that cocoa you are 
drinking again? ” 

‘‘Yes, I have it every now and then. I 
don’t think so much tea and coffee is good 
for me.” 

So much? I never noticed that you drank 
more than most people.” 

Perhaps not, but most people overdo it.” 

Oh, the tea and coffee drink isn’t going 


to hurt you.” 


78 


THE NEW MOON. 


“ You don’t know.” She said it so seriously 
that I looked up. 

“That’s what I’ve been wanting to talk to 
you about.” She left the table and came and 
sat on a low chair opposite me. “ Don’t you 
think, Dr. Monroe, that it’s very stupid to go 
blindly through the world without any clear 
idea of one’s probable inheritance, and one’s 
duty to — to the possible future ? ” 

“ Why, yes.” 

“ Don’t you think it’s a mistake for a woman 
to run the risk of maldng' other people” — it 
may have been the reflection of the fire, but I 
thought at the time that she flushed slightly 
— “making other people pay in weakness or 
disease for her — her ignorance — and — reticence 
about herself? ” 

“ Of course.” I set down my cup and 
leaned forward. 

“Well, then, you won’t be surprised that 
I’ve taken a great deal of interest in knowing 


THE NEW MOON. 


79 


about my parents, and trying to find out what 
legacy they’ve left me.” 

'' I understand.” 

“ I have always known that my father had a 
gloomy, unhappy disposition, but it was only 
about a year ago that my grandmother told me 
that my mother — my mother died insane.” 

Indeed, I hadn’t heard.” 

Nobody in England knows it. They lived 
abroad. And both she and my father died 
young. I was only a few months old.” 

There was a pause. I waited for more. 

** I suppose you think it’s a bad lookout for 
me,” she said, '^but I’ve come not to think so.” 

I looked at the radiant young creature be- 
fore me, and smiled to myself. 

“You have come te think — ” 

“ That a person with a fair amount of bodily 

health and a certain strength of will, who is 

aware of the weak place in the constitution — 

aware of it, not frightened by it, you see ” 
6 


80 


THE NEW MOON. 


— she lifted and dropped her forefinger on her 
knee with an old-fashioned air of impartial 
exposition — such a person being forewarned, 
and having the sense to profit by his know- 
ledge, may — don’t you think so, too? — isn’t it 
very likely? — he may, by care and moderate 
watchfulness, keep the taint from ever appear- 
ing. Oh, I’ve been thinking it out and get- 
ting the thing clear to myself for the last twelve 
months. Nobody inherits absolute health. To 
know what you have a tendency towards is a 
great advantage if you’re not weak-minded. ” 

“ Ah, but so many people are.” 

''Well, I suppose that’s the kind of weak- 
ness that must go to the wall. But suppose a 
person strong enough to bear the truth about 
himself, and about the laws of health, without 
letting it unnerve him — he has an advantage, 
I’ve come to think, over the man who starts 
out with no particular or recognised taint and 
no knowledge of his body or his mind — or, if 


THE NEW MOON. 


81 


knowledge, no will to enforce it. The ignorant 
person is as likely to develop disease — don’t 
you think ? — as the forewarned man who carries 
the seeds of it about with him, but who orders 
his life wisely and — and — without fear.” 

I stared abstractedly into the fire. 

“ I’ve said it incoherently, although I’ve so 
often imagined myself telling you what I felt; 
and now that I’ve done so, T dare say you 
.think I’m wrong.” 

I think we are all very much in the dark 
still about heredity — ” I paused. 

And you think, on the whole, that any one 
with such an inheritance as mine ought — ought 
never — for instance, to marry ? ” 

The speech jarred on me. She saw it, but 
she did not understand my feeling any more 
than, at that time, I did myself. 

Forgive me. I — you see I have no one to 
discuss these things with,” she said, and I’m 
sure a girl ought very early in life to have a 


82 


THE NEW MOON. 


definite understanding with herself. It must 
be easier to decide such a question in the ab- 
stract. She ought not to wait till she is face 
to face with — with — ” 

Our eyes met and she flushed again — more 
painfully. I felt a sudden quite new impulse 
towards the strong sensitive creature sitting 
there. 

^'You misunderstand me.” I got up and 
stood by the end of the mantelpiece, watching 
the firelight flicker in the girl’s face. I don’t 
know that I’m prepared to follow Weismann 
altogether, but I am certainly disposed to 
think environment the bigger side of the 
health question. Your conditions have been 
excellent. Your strength, as I’ve had occasion 
to see in the sick-room, is remarkable. Your 
nerves are the best of servants to you, and if 
I were asked to instance a woman who was 
sound to the core, I think I would say, * Come 
forward. Miss Dorothy Lance.’” 


THE NEW MOON. 


83 


She stood up, with her clasped hands under 
her chin, her lips parted, her eyes liquid and 
shining. 

** You’d say that? ” she said. 

I would, and I’ve known you nearly a 
year.” 

“ But my mother — ” 

My dear child, there are fewer families than 
you think quite free from some such instance. 
Your mother’s illness may very probably have 
been due to causes as fortuitous and mechani- 
cal as an injury received in a railway accident. 
It may have been a case of puerperal mania, 
since she died so soon after your birth. It 
means very little.” 

My grandmother doesn’t like me to talk 
about it. She and my mother were not 
friends. She doesn’t tell me much — ” 

“ I would never give it another thought if I 
were you.” 

We stood there, each smiling into the other’s 


84 


THE NEW MOON. 


face — I too happy at having called up that 
look of radiant gladness into the girl’s eyes, too 
content with her contentment, to analyse or 
question. It was only later, looking back, that 
I wondered whether she had deceived herself 
in thinking she was without fear. Had I re- 
assured her? Had I dissipated the dread she 
declared did not exist? No, I could not be- 
lieve it. If ever there was a woman of abso- 
lute sincerity, sanity, and self-knowledge, she 
was that woman. I see now — what I ought 
perhaps to have seen then — that it was not the 
doctor who had reassured her, but the man — 
or rather that she craved assurance not so 
much of her own health of mind as of mine. 
I know now that she felt instinctively she was 
bound to let me know as much as she did of 
her family history — that she spoke, not to the 
doctor and the friend, but behind them to the 
man she was beginning to look on as a lover. 


THE NEW MOON. 


85 


It was one evening in May, a month or so 
after the talk about heredity, that we were dis- 
cussing a new novel we had both been reading. 

The man made me think of you some- 
times,” she said — I mean in his home sur- 
roundings.” 

“Indeed?” I said. “I don’t see the least 
resemblance.” 

“Yes, in his loneliness and his kindness to 
his servants, and that kind of thing.” 

I laughed. 

“ This is embarrassing. It must be from me 
that you’ve gathered these flattering impres- 
sions. But I’ve misled you. I’m very little 
concerned about my servants.” 

“ Oh, I haven’t forgotten that day you 
wouldn’t come in and have tea because you 
were anxious about your housekeeper’s sore 
throat.” 

“ Ah well ! — that — ” 


8G 


THE NEW MOON. 


She must be rather an interesting creature. 
How old a woman is she? You never tell me 
anything about your — ** 

She’s anywhere from forty to fifty, and 
she’s as little interesting as. any one you ever 
saw in your life.” 

One or two things you’ve let drop about 
her have seemed to me 7Jerj/ interesting.” 

Oh, she’s a good creature. She’s been in- 
valuable since my wife’s health broke down.” 

‘'Your wife?'' I hear the sound in my 
ears still, and my nerves twitch and tighten. 
Shall I ever forget the look in her face as she 
echoed herself under her breath : 

“ Your wife ! " 

She stared at me with a kind of pathetic be- 
wilderment. Then quite suddenly she flushed 
scarlet and looked down. I bent over her, 
saying I know not what broken, distracted 
words; stung by her look into instant realisa- 
tion of how far we had unconsciously drifted. 


THE NEW MOON. 


87 


Not a syllable of love-making had passed be- 
tween us — it seems, as I look back, almost the 
only thing in the world we had not discussed, 
for we were close friends now, friends of a 
year’s standing. As I stood over the girl, 
looking down on her bowed head, I realised 
with horrible distinctness how she had crept 
into the very heart of my life, and what an 
agony it would be to tear her out. 

“ Tell me how you came to think I was un- 
married.” No answer. She sat motionless. 

Oh, tell me, my friend ! Was it I ? Was it 
my doing? Did I ever say anything to make 
you think — ” 

I thought she was crying. She lifted her 
face. It was set and dry-eyed. The sight of 
it moved me more than tears. 

It doesn’t matter,” she said, and stood up. 

My dear,” I cried out, catching her hand, 
don’t look like that — I can’t bear it!” 

It would have been better to tell me,” she 


88 


THE NEW MOON. 


said, speaking with difficulty and turning to go. 
But I held her fast. 

"‘You don’t understand. I never speak of 
my home life. I — I wouldn’t even to you 
complain of it; and I — oh, don’t you under- 
stand that I’ve been glad to forget it when I’ve 
been with you!” She gave me a piteous little 
upward glance, and dropped her head. “We 
have had the whole wide world to roam about 
in. Believe me, I never meant to mislead you 
by not taking you across that one threshold. 
I thought, of course, you knew I was married. 
I would have sworn I’d mentioned my wife at 
the beginning. She knows of you ; I sup- 
posed, of course, you had heard of her. I’ve 
thought your silence about her was intuitive 
and characteristic.” And I told her what she 
had come to be to me, and how it was only 
that day, that very hour, that I fully under- 
stood how it was with us. I tried to draw her 
down beside me on the sofa, but she shrank 


THE NEW MOON. 


89 


away, and went and leaned on the mantel- 
piece. 

Confess,” I said, “ that you were taken by 
surprise as well as I ! ” 

“ No,” she said gravely. “ I have known 
for months. I knew when I refused George 
Templeton in the winter. Fve been thinking 
it might be all the money grandmamma means 
to leave me — that it was that, perhaps, that 
stood between us — you might have only your 
practice and might fancy — oh well, it doesn’t 
matter now,” she said, drawing her hand 
across her face. I think you must tell me a 
little about your wife, please.” 

What shall I tell you ? ” I said miserably. 

“ Why have you drifted so apart? ” 

“ We were never truly together. We were 
boy and girl, and as ignorant of each other as 
we were of life.” 

But you cared for her once? ” 

“ Yes, as a boy cares — for a pretty face.” 


90 


THE NEW MOON. 


And that sort of ' caring ’ doesn’t last ? ” 
Not always, it seems.” Underneath my 
own bitterness I heard her bitter question — 

“ Does anything of this kind last? ” 

“ Don’t torture me, my friend. Long ago 
we agreed to recognise that nothing is station- 
ary ; everything is either growing or decaying. 
There’s no love so great that it may not 
dwindle, or so steadfast that it may not 
strengthen and develop along new lines as life 
goes on. We can no more stand still than the 
stars. Yesterday you and I seemed anchored 
in friendship; to-day — to-day we are adrift.” 

” No, no,” she said, putting out her hands 
appealingly. We’re not adrift. We are two 
sane, tolerably honest people. We must take 
counsel together. No, sit where you are!” 
She motioned me back as I rose and came for- 
ward. '*Tell me truly, have I come between 
you and your wife?” 

“ No — no indeed ! ” 


THE NEW MOON. 


91 


“ Have I in the least lessened your kindness 
to her?” 

''You have made all kindness easier to me.” 

" Is there any difference in your relation to- 
wards her since our friendship began?” 

" Yes, a happy man is always more tolerant, 
more gentle. I am more considerate of her, I 
think, than I used to be.” 

"And she has no suspicion?” 

" None whatever.” 

"Then I will tell you what we must do. 
We must hold fast to our friendship and keep 
it free of stain. It shall hurt no one and it 
will help us.” Her mouth quivered, and I was 
thankful to see the stony look melting out of 
her face. " You will see I can be a good 
friend,” she went on. "You will come here 
day after day as long as grandmamma lives. 
Our life will go on just the same. The only 
difference is I am enlightened now — I under- 
stand. Good-bye till to-morrow.” She left 


92 


THE NEW MOON. 


the mantelpiece and came and took my hand 
an instant. Before I could answer her, she 
was at the door, looked back, nodded with a 
wintry little smile, and was gone. 

So this is the end ! I said to myself. George 
Templeton will have a successor, and — well, 
well — I took my hat and left the house. 


But it was not the end. Templeton had his 
successor in Guy Mallard, who had no better 
luck. 

When Mrs. Lance complained to me pri- 
vately of Dorothy’s rejection of another eligi- 
ble, I felt a guilty responsibility. Was I spoil- 
ing her life? I gathered myself together, and 
formed an instant plan of action. 

When I went downstairs, I told Dorothy I 
was going to put Mrs. Lance’s case into other 
hands, and meant to go abroad. 

She turned sharply and studied my face. A 


THE NEW MOON. 


93 


look of relief came over her own. You’ve 
heard about Guy,” she said smiling. It’s of 
no use to threaten me, sir. I shall not marry, 
no matter what you do; and you must see 
that, since you have brought me to this frame 
of mind, it would be cruel to go away and 
leave me without — without anything to make 
life worth living.” 

The beautiful face was very soft and tender. 
I went and looked out of the window with 
misty eyes. 

** Come,” she said, ” we need cheering before 
we go to lessons. I’ve got a new song.” She 
sat down and ran over a prelude. She played 
and sang to me till it was time for me to go. 

The next morning I was coming, as usual, 
out of Wilfred Ballantyne’s house, when Doro- 
thy’s maid met me at the door with a letter in 
her hand. 

** Good-morning, sir. Miss Dorothy thought 


I’d catch you here.” 


94 


THE NEW MOON. 


“What is it?” I said suspiciously, turning 
over the envelope. “ Anybody ill?” 

“Oh no, sir; just a message from Miss 
Dorothy,” and the discreet Abigail went her 
way. 

Inside the brougham I broke the seal and 
read : 

“ 2 A.M. 

“ Dear Dr. Monroe : I’ve not been able 
to sleep for thinking you might carry out your 
threat of going away. I’ve been tormented by 
the possibility of your leaving town before we 
could meet again. I see how you might think 
you were doing me a kindness even, instead of 
the greatest injury it is in your power to inflict. 
I must ask you to remember that a woman of 
twenty-four should not be treated as a child. 
It is only fair to give me a voice in my own 
destiny. You must not do us both so great a 
wrong as to wrench our lives apart. If such an 
" end ’ brought suffering to me alone, I think I 


THE NEW MOON. 


95 


could hold my peace ; but I know it would be 
an evil day for you too. Our comradeship is 
good to you, my friend. You are a different 
man from the Dr. Monroe who came here last 
summer, and used to frighten me with his 
cynicism and his solemn looks. How often 
you’ve said, * Before our meeting, life was 
merely a thing to be endured, and now — ’ 

** ^ Hush, hush ! ’ I hear you saying. ' I’m 
not thinking of myself.’ 

*‘Very well, then, think of me. You have 
simply created a new heaven and a new earth 
for me, and you can’t undo that. You can 
only take away my guide and friend, and leave 
me infinitely lonely. After all, the world’s a 
big place, and the chance of stumbling on 
one’s alter ego in the crowd is none of the best. 
Most women grow up and marry and die, and 
they never in all their days have so much as 
touched the hand of their heart’s true comrade. 

Most of us go wearily up and down the world 
7 


96 


THE NEW MOON. 


looking into this strange face and that, with 
the silent question, ' Art thou he ? ’ until our 
eyes are dim, and our hearts are sick, and we 
can only muster strength, poor hypocrites, to 
deny that all our life ‘ has been but waiting till 
he came.’ Will you think me overbold if I 
say that I know quite well that you and I were 
made each to be the other’s friend? You can 
do for me what no other human being can, and 
the service I can show you is something you 
shall look for in vain from any other hand. 

How we bandy big words about Life and 
Success or Failure! Life is the power to 
search our comrade out and cherish him ; 
Failure is to miss him by the way. 

*^Why should you want me to marry? 
Wouldn’t it be sad enough if Fd been married 
already when we met? That I should so 
hamper myself now is simply inconceivable. 
You are blinded by the conventional concern 
of a girl’s friends to get her married at all 


THE NEW MOON. 


97 


costs. Forgive me if I say it’s the least 
worthy trait I’ve discovered in you. 

“ Please don’t punish me for not being able 
to be more to you than your devoted friend, 

“ Dorothy.” 

I went to her in the late afternoon with a 
full heart. Never had she seemed to me more 
restful and tender, more utterly beautiful, body 
and soul. That was the last time we ever dis- 
cussed the possibility of parting. I dare not 
be so boastful as to say that I could, unhelped, 
have kept faithful to the standard the girl’s 
pride and principle had set up before us ; but it 
is certain there was no moment of our inter- 
course, in those beautiful three years that fol- 
lowed, that even her sensitiveness could recall 
with shrinking or shadow of regret. 


98 


THE NEW MOON. 


It was a year ago last spring that Mrs. Lance 
began to fail, and about the same time her 
grandnephew, Captain Donald M‘Kay, came 
home from India, and made the old lady’s 
house his London headquarters. She hadn’t 
seen him since he was a boy, and, contrary to 
her custom where her relations were concerned, 
she conceived a violent liking for that rather 
dull young man. I soon saw that the wily old 
woman would be found match-making on her 
death-bed, and I was naturally revolted at the 
idea of the peerless Dorothy being obliged to 
submit to her kinsman’s awkward attentions. 
To my no small discomfort Dorothy seemed 
rather to like the Captain. I used to come 
away from my visits those days with a sickness 
at my heart. Not a word with Dorothy alone, 
and the hulking Captain always underfoot. 
Mrs. Lance was growing weaker daily, and when 
she was gone, how in God’s name was I to see 
Dorothy? How could I help losing her? 


THE NEW MOON. 


99 


All such madnesses vanished instantly before 
the light of her eyes. But when I was away 
from her I could not help knowing and feeling 
in every nerve of my body that others, whether 
men or women, were by her side, and could 
serve her, and worship her, in ways denied to 
me. I could not help knowing that, however 
little she might really care for him, another man 
had the right to press his suit upon her, and 
proclaim himself, however hopelessly, her lover. 
I wondered sometimes whether the jealousy 
of distrust can be any more agonising than the 
pain which may coexist with the most perfect 
confidence. 

I used to go through sharp crises of what, I 
suppose, I must call jealousy. Not that, deep 
down in my heart, I had a moment’s doubt of 
Dorothy’s love and faith. But on the surface 
the sheer pain of absence and renunciation 
would translate itself into a sort of reproach, 
and I would tell myself — knowing all the time 


100 


THE NEW MOON. 


it was a lie — that she was less considerate, less 
solicitous to spare me suffering, than she might 
have been. 

Yes, those were evil days. I used to come 
home and sit by my wife’s sofa in the evening, 
listen to her repinings, and answer her ques- 
tions, and wonder dully how long it would last. 
The strain told on me by and by, and I found 
the pressure on my patience more and more 
difficult to bear. Was it partly, too, my long 
association with a clear-headed, logical-minded 
girl that made my poor invalid’s fancies and 
vagaries more trying than of old? I don’t 
know. At all events, I used to school myself 
to answer gently and sympathetically, and with 
infinite pains to be kind. I believe I usually 
succeeded after a fashion. But I used to think : 
In all the years she’s lived beside me, I’ve been 
able to teach this wife of mine nothing — noth- 
ing. Every little scrap of prejudice and super- 
stition that she brought to me as a girl she had 


THE NEW MOON. 


101 


religiously kept With her, superstition was a 
cult ; it stood her instead of poetry, learning, or 
friends. She had a sign for every event of life, 
and an omen for every dream. How I had 
laboured in the years gone by, by reason and 
ridicule, to root this vile weed out! I might 
as well have tried to bottle up the night, and 
show her an empty phial as a proof there was 
nothing to fear in the dark. Her mind was a 
kind of quicksilver, impossible to grasp or dis- 
cipline. As I say, I had long given up that 
task; just as, after taking her about half over 
the world, I had long ago given up the attempt 
to get her back to normal physical health. I 
had only harassed and wearied her in both 
cases; but the years brought wisdom. I used 
to find myself thinking it ” merely typical ” in 
this woman, whose affection and loyalty I had 
never known falter, that in all the years we had 
lived side by side she had never taken to heart 
my contempt for the attitude of mind that gives 


102 


THE NEW MOON. 


popular superstition its hold on the imagination. 
She had never in all that time spared me one 
detail of broken glass, or a passing under a lad- 
der, a winding-sheet in the candle,” or any of 
the foolish notions that she nursed and I ab- 
horred. She would now, after eighteen years* 
experience, call upon me with querulous child- 
ish horror to notice how I’d crossed my knives 
at dinner, or had my hair cut in some unpro- 
pitious phase of the moon. These things had 
always annoyed me, but never so much as now. 
As I say, it must have been by contrast. 


I CAME home from Mrs. Lance’s one after- 
noon in June without seeing Dorothy. She 
had left me a little note on the oak chest in the 
hall, to say she had gone to a concert with 
Captain M‘Kay. This had happened twice be- 
fore. She had several times dined out, too, with 
long-neglected friends, and gone to the theatre 


THE NEW MOON. 


103 


under her cousin’s escort. Was she growing 
restless? Was she beginning to care seriously 
for — No, no. I shook myself free from the 
thought. But it was not to be denied that 
Dorothy was going about a good deal for the 
first time since I had known her. Had the old 
life tired her at last? What more natural? 
What more inevitable? With damnable itera- 
tion the question, in one form or another, kept 
beating at my brain. 

I went into my wife’s sitting-room for a cup 
of tea. She was not there, but it was early. 
She was probably upstairs dressing. One of 
her eccentricities was to change her dress four 
or five times a day, although she saw no one, 
and never went out except for a drive when the 
weather was fair. 

I sat waiting till five o’clock. Then I rang. 

Bring tea,” I said. Where is Mrs. Monroe?” 

She — er — she’s out, sir.” 


“ Out!” I exclaimed. ‘"Where?” 


104 


THE NEW MOON. 


She’s took Watson, sir. She always goes 
on Wednesdays at this time.” 

Not on foot? ” 

No, sir. In a cab.” 

“In a cab?” I repeated incredulously. I 
thought I saw in the maid’s face a desire to en- 
lighten me. “ Bring tea,” I said hastily. I sat 
and pondered. 

Presently I heard voices in the hall. I opened 
the door and saw my wife taking off her count- 
less wraps. 

She turned and caught sight of me. 

“O Jiffy, are you home? How early you 
are ! ” She came forward and kissed me. 

“ You’re cold,” I said, drawing her into the 
room, and I made her chair comfortable with 
the cushions and footstool. The tea was 
brought in. When the servant was gone, I 
brought my wife a cup, and put it on the small 
table at her side. 

“You must be feeling much better,” I said. 

“ Why?” 


THE NEW MOON. 


105 


“ Surely, if you are able to go out for a cab- 
drive on a windy afternoon like this.” 

No, I’m not better at all.” 

” Where did you go? ” 

” I don’t know if you’ll like it. Jiffy, and I 
must go, you know.” 

” Where?” 

“To Mrs. Sanderson’s in Margaret Street.” 

“Who is Mrs. Sanderson?” 

“ Oh, she’s a kind of sibyl.” 

“ Kind of what? ” 

“ Sibyl — prophetess — ” 

“ Don’t talk nonsense, Milly.” 

* “ It’s not nonsense at all. She never makes 
a mistake. She’s simply wonderful. I looked 
into the crystal ball to-day. Ugh! I sha’n’t 
do that again.” 

“ Do you mean to say you’ve been going to 
some wretched fortune-teller’s?” 

“Now, you see! I felt you’d only scoff, 
and so I wouldn’t tell you.” 

“ How can you be so foolish?” I sat down 


106 


THE NEW MOON. 


with my tea-cup in my hand, feeling jaded and 
out of sorts. 

It’s not in the least foolish; and oh, Jiffy, I 
wish you’d come and let her look at your hand. 
She tells you everything — your character, and 
what’s happened in the past, and what’s going 
to happen — and — oh, fancy, she says some 
trouble is coming to me! She’s never been 
wrong before, and it makes me — Oh — h — h 1 ” 
She gave a little cry, and set down her tea-cup, 
holding her left hand over her eyes. 

“What is the matter?” I jumped up in a 
fright. 

“The moon! The moon!” 

I felt for an instant that her reason had given 
way. 

“ Milly, my dear — ” I took her hand trem- 
bling. 

“ Why didn’t you let down the blind, Geof- 
frey?” she said. I turned away dazed to pull 
down the blind. 


THE NEW MOON. 


107 


Oh, it’s no use now — I’ve seen it.” 

“ Seen what? ” 

“ The new moon, of course, and through 
glass. Now you see how exactly right that 
woman always is!” She looked at me almost 
triumphantly as I came back to my seat. 

“ Oh,” I said, a good deal relieved, “ did she 
tell you you were going to see the moon through 
glass? ” 

“ No, you stupid boy. She said I was going 
to have some great trouble, and that I was go- 
ing to be very ill. I come home, and here the 
first thing that happens is, I see the new moon 
through glass. It’s the most frightful bad luck.” 

“ I wish you’d put that nonsense out of your 
head.” 

“And — oh dear! oh dear! — I wish you’d 
just come with me once to Mrs. Sanderson. 
Why, palmistry’s a science, Geoffrey! I could 
tell you the most wonderful cases of predictions 
coming true. You shouldn’t sneer at things 


108 


THE NEW MOON. 


you don’t understand. Heavens ! what do you 
suppose is going to happen? ” She lay back in 
her chair and closed her eyes wearily. '"The 
last time she said I was going to be ill I was, 
you know — oh, dreadfully, dreadfully ill ! ” 

Of course the prediction was duly verified on 
this occasion. It became evident in a day or 
so that my wife’s old but very slight weakness 
of the heart was sensibly increased. 

Things didn’t mend during the weeks that 
followed. Dorothy was absorbed by the fail- 
ing health of her grandmother and the demands 
of her cousin-guest, and we were never sure of 
being alone an instant. I lived on crumbs of 
the coldest comfort ; and cheerless as the pres- 
ent was, I dreaded to look a day beyond. 

It was on Dorothy’s birthday, the loth of 
July, that we had a little talk together over 
some old prints I had brought her. 

I was not in the best of spirits, and she no- 
ticed it. 


THE NEW MOON. 


109 


** Is anything the matter? ” she said, looking 
up at me as she stood close at my side. 

Nothing very new, Fm afraid.” 

” I wish I could help you, dear friend ; I 
wish I could help us both.” 

Dorothy,” I said, on an impulse too strong 
and sudden to resist, ” are you conscious of 
any change that may be coming to us — 
through yotiy I mean — through some alteration 
— or possible new interest for you ? ” 

She only shook her head. 

Tell me,” I whispered — “ tell me honestly.” 
‘'Dear friend! You don’t need me to tell 
you what you know” 

As she glanced up at me with love-lit, won- 
derful eyes, I saw her lashes were wet. My 
heart burst into singing. I felt like a con- 
demned man who is reprieved. 

I went home saying to myself : ” I haven’t 
lost her yet — not yet — not yet ! ” 

In the hall my wife’s maid met me. ” Madam 


110 


THE NEW MOON. 


is not SO well/’ she said; ‘‘will you come to 
her?” 

I ran upstairs. My wife’s room was dark- 
ened, and as I went in I heard her crying softly 
among the pillows. 

“ What’s the matter? ” I said ; why are you 
in the dark?” I pulled up the nearest blind. 
When I came back to her I saw that she was 
lying prone on the outside of the bed, with her 
head buried in the clothes, sobbing convulsively. 

What is it?” I said, lifting her up. “Are 
you in pain? ” 

I held the thin little figure in my arms a 
moment, and then laid her down and covered 
her up. 

“ You’re thoroughly chilled,” I said. “ What 
does Watson mean by leaving you like this?” 

“ I sent her away — I couldn’t bear any one 
near. O Geoffrey, I’ve seen the new moon the 
second time through glass.” She began to cry 
weakly again. 


THE NEW MOON. 


Ill 


“ My dear child ! What if you have ? Come 
now, I’ll bring you a little draught, and you’ll 
see, you’ll be all right to-morrow.” I rang for 
Watson, and went downstairs to prepare a sleep- 
ing-potion. 

When I came back with it I found my wife 
talking vehemently to Watson, and caught the 
phrase, A coffin in the crystal.” She stopped 
as I came in, and the servant went out. 

There!” I said, as I gave my wife the 
draught. ” That will do you all the good in 
the world.” 

She shook her head, but drank the medicine 
off. I couldn’t help noticing how haggard and 
bloodless she was looking. As she handed me 
back the glass she clutched me by the sleeve. 

“ Geoffrey,” she said, if I see it the third 
time — I shall know what it means.'* She 
started nervously as the door creaked. It was 
Watson coming in with the hot-water bottle. 


8 


112 


THE NEW MOON. 


The next morning found my wife much ex- 
hausted and suffering from weak action of the 
heart. I did not leave her, except to see the 
patients that came to the house, till she fell 
asleep late in the afternoon. Then I jumped 
into a hansom and drove to Mrs. Lance’s. I 
saw the moment I entered the room that the 
marked improvement in her condition mani- 
fested during the last few days was holding its 
own. She informed me it was not in the least 
due to the new medicine we had been trying, 
but to the tonic of her growing conviction that, if 
her life were spared, she would bring about the 
marriage that she had come to regard as a vital 
condition of the world’s continuing prosperity. 

‘^Yes, yes! I’m marvellously better these 
last few days,” she said, ** and I’ll tell you 
what it’s put into my mind. We’ll take our 
outing in Switzerland this year. It will be 
good for Dorothy.” 


THE NEW MOON. 


113 


“ For — for Miss Lance? ” I said, with a sink- 
ing heart. And you won’t feel nervous at 
being so far out of my reach? ” 

Ah, that’s the very point. We’ll time our 
trip so that you can come too. You take your 
holiday soon, don’t you ? ” 

“Yes, but much as I’d like — ” 

“ Come, come now. I’ll take no denials. 
We’ll go to Fichtenberg. I know the very 
chalet we’ll have.” 

“ No, thanks — it’s quite impossible. My wife 
is too much out of health for me to leave.” 

“ Bring your wife with you.” 

“ I don’t think that could be managed,” I 
said. But still we discussed the matter, and I 
saw that, whether I went or not, Mrs. Lance 
was bent on carrying out her scheme. She let 
fall sundry remarks about Dorothy needing a 
change — about “young people” and “walks” 
and “ excursions.” I saw it all plainly enough, 
and went downstairs in no very enviable frame 


114 


THE NEW MOON. 


of mind. Dorothy was standing at the draw- 
ing-room door waiting for me. She looked up 
smiling, but anxious, I thought, with her finger 
to her lips. She came forward as I reached 
the bottom of the stairs. 

*‘Sh! Donald’s smoking in the billiard- 
room,” she whispered, beckoning me to follow 
her to the drawing-room. 

“Billiard-room! ” I echoed, “I didn’t know 
you had one.” 

“ Oh yes, my father always used it. Grand- 
mamma’s just had it cleared out and repaired.” 
She shut the door cautiously behind us. 

“ For Captain M'Kay, I suppose? ” 

“Yes. Sit down.” She wheeled “my” 
chair out of a corner. 

“ Mrs. Lance is very considerate of Captain 
M‘Kay,” I said, with not a tithe of the bitter- 
ness I felt. 

“ Grandmamma has a craze for him just at 
present. How long it is since we had a quiet 


THE NEW MOON. 


115 


word together ! ** She sat in a low chair beside 
me, looking up with her cheek supported on 
her hand. 

“Yes,” I said moodily, “thanks to Captain 
M^Kay.” 

“ Captain M'Kay doesn’t deserve all our 
thanks,” she returned, with quick emphasis. I 
started slightly. 

“Dorothy! You’ve never spoken like that 
before.” 

“No, no! Forgive me, dear friend.” As 
she dropped her head between her hands I saw 
her eyes were full of tears. I put out my 
hand to touch her hair, and drew it suddenly 
back. 

“ Shall I tell you what I sometimes regret 
most of all?” she said, through her fingers. 

“What?” 

“That you and I are so disgustingly good.” 

“ Do you think we’re good enough to bother 
about?” I said drearily. 


116 


THE NEW MOON. 


** Quite good enough to spoil our lives,” she 
said, lifting her head suddenly, “ and our char- 
acters too, I sometimes think.” 

'' What has come over you, Dorothy ? ” 

“ Oh, I don’t know. I’m not myself to-day 
— or else I’ve not been myself before. I don’t 
know which it is. I’m sure.” She dropped her 
head into her hands again. 

‘"Dear!” I said. I laid my hand on her 
shoulder. She jumped up almost fiercely. 

Please don’t touch me,” she said, and went 
over to the window with her handkerchief to 
her eyes. She came back almost at once and 
sat down in another chair farther from me. 

Of course it isn’t our fault, or anybody 
else’s fault, that we are what we are, and that 
Fate is against u». Though I told my grand- 
mother this morning, when she said I wasn’t 
like other girls, that that was the concern of my 
ancestors and my training, and that if I wasn’t 
satisfactory, somebody owed me an apology.” 


THE NEW MOON. 


117 


We were silent for a moment or two. Then 
I said, thinking out loud, as I often did with 
her: 

I sometimes believe we’re all just alike ex- 
cept in discretion.” 

Dorothy looked up. 

We are all alike,” I went on, except in 
the account we give of ourselves. I am as 
conceited as Captain M‘Kay, but my conceit is 
so great it hurts me to brag. I am as selfish 
as anybody you please, but so selfish that I 
long to appear capable of abnegation. I could 
accuse myself of such things that it were 
better my mother had not borne me; but that 
is not the account my discretion gives of me to 
the world. I go about with the label ' excel- 
lent fellow’ on my back, and old ladies put 
their trust in me. A kind of decent shame 
prevents one from undressing in the market- 
place; but under their clothes, men are all of 
one general pattern.” 


118 


THE NEW MOON. 


“ Then you think you and I are not so good 
after all ? ” She was looking at me with curi- 
ous eyes. 

“ Not really ; but we are bound to behave as 
if we were. There is an old habit in our blood 
that constrains us to conform.” I had got up, 
remembering the moment after, with ironic 
self-realisation, that it was the thought of my 
wife in the background of my mind that was 
cutting my visit short. “ We can’t help our- 
selves,” I said, taking her hand. We had 
miserable hair-splitting ancestors, with never 
an honest rogue among them.” 

‘‘ You don’t think the thought of my grand- 
mother should give me courage?” the girl 
said, with an audacious lifting of the chin. 

‘‘ I’m afraid not,” I answered. Mrs. Lance 
is evidently a sport, and you’re the product of a 
remoter atavism.” I went away without men- 
tioning Switzerland, though it had not been a 
moment absent from the thoughts of both. 


THE NEW MOON. 


119 


My wife was lying in a kind of stupor when 
I got back. I felt her pulse and took her 
temperature, and questioned Watson. 

The case was baffling, but not at all without 
precedent. I stood by the window looking 
out and thinking. Was she going to die ? 
She almost certainly would, if she were not 
roused out of this morbid state. Before I 
could control my vagrant thoughts, they car- 
ried me swiftly past a series of pictures of her 
decline, until in imagination I stood looking 
into her coffin saying triumphantly, '' Re- 
leased! Released!” thinking not at all of the 
dead, but vividly, poignantly of the living. A 
movement from the invalid jostled me back 
against reality, and I shuddered to think where 
I had allowed myself to stray. As I looked 
across at her bloodless face on the pillow, the 
hollow eyes opened and seemed to look speech- 
less reproach at me. I could hardly have felt 


120 


THE NEW MOON. 


guiltier if she had caught me pouring poison 
into her glass. I went downstairs to my study 
and tried to read. I went over the same para- 
graph a dozen times. The words conveyed no 
meaning. 

If you were a scoundrel, now,” something 
kept saying in my ears, you would need only 
to sit quite still, just as you’re doing.” 

Good God ! I thought, this is the way crime is 
born ! I flung down my book and ran upstairs. 

** Milly,” I said breathlessly, when I reached 
the bedside, ‘^how would you like to go to 
Switzerland with me for our holiday?” 

She turned her head suddenly and looked at 
me with amazement. 

I go to Switzerland ! Don’t be so absurd 
and heartless! How can I travel half over 
Europe when I can’t cross the room ? ” 

Oh, but that’s only because you’ve been in 
London too long. Mountain air is what you 
need.” 


raE NEW MOON. 


121 


" I haven’t the strength for such a journey.” 

*'You don’t need strength. You shall be 
carried, and we’ll go soon. I’ll write to Seton 
Smith and see if he can’t take up my work. 
Now get better as soon as you can. Before 
the week’s out we’ll be in Fichtenberg. Yes, 
we will, if I have to carry you all the way.” 

She smiled and shook her head. 

” I used to like Switzerland,” she said. 


So it was that we anticipated Mrs. Lance 
and her party, and after an unspeakably weari- 
some journey were installed at the big Pension 
on the outskirts of Ober-Fichtenberg, two days 
before the arrival of the others. 

It was a rambling old structure that had 
been a private house. In some period of 
former prosperity as a summer resort it had 
acquired a huge modern wing. But so few 
people patronised the place now, we wondered 


122 


THE NEW MOON. 


how the proprietor made the establishment 
pay. 

We had front rooms looking out on the cliff, 
where a little above us, under a great ledge of 
rock, the peaked and gabled Chalet Hohheim 
had been built, and dedicated to the use of in- 
valids, who were said to prosper greatly in that 
sheltered nook. But the place was inaccessible 
and expensive to keep up, and Fichtenberg 
little known. Often for years at a stretch the 
chalet was tenantless. 

From our sitting-room my wife and I 
watched the lights spring up in the windows 
opposite, on the first night of Mrs. Lance’s 
arrival. “ How much more cheerful it will be 
now,” Millicent said. Did you tell me she 
was better?” 

“ Oh, wonderfully!” 

And her granddaughter? ” 

** She’s always well.” 

I watched you just now when you went 


THE NEW MOON. 


123 


out to meet them,” my wife went on. I 
thought the old lady seemed rather brusque 
and ungracious.” 

Oh, she was a little put out at our coming 
away on such short notice. She wanted us to 
travel with her.” 

” And why didn’t we? ” 

“ I thought it would be best for you to get 
away as soon as possible. Besides, I didn’t 
want you to hurry the journey. They’ve 
come straight through.” 

I thought I knew how good you were. 
Jiffy, but I didn’t know half until I got so ill.” 

” Nonsense,” I said. I got up and watched 
the lights over the way flitting about as if an 
inspection were in progress. They all disap- 
peared presently except the one in the window 
in the gable. 

“ Stand a little to one side. Jiffy ; you never 
seem to think I might like to see too.” 

I obeyed. 


124 


THE NEW MOON. 


The blind in the high gable window above 
us drew up and Dorothy looked out into the 
dusk. She saw me and smiled, and waved her 
hand. I think I returned her salute stiffly. 
She disappeared, but the candles were left 
burning. Through the square of yellow light 
we could see into the room. 

I was surprised to see how pretty she is,” 
said my wife. ”Who was the tall sunburnt 
man? ” 

“ Captain M‘Kay, Mrs. Lance’s niece’s son.” 

Are they engaged or anything? ” 

“ Not that I know of. Why ? ” 

“ Oh, I don’t know. I believe they will be 
if they’re not. You’ll see. Shut the window, 
Geoffrey; you’ll have me catching cold.” 


I VISITED Mrs. Lance in the morning and 
found her more amiable; perhaps because she 
was less well after her foolhardy journey, and 


THE NEW MOON. 


125 


remembered my former usefulness. Dorothy 
sat by her grandmother’s side. She was look- 
ing her most radiant, and yet a little wistful at 
times, I thought. 

‘‘ I’ve been telling Dorothy she must go 
over and see your wife, Dr. Monroe,” said 
Mrs. Lance. 

“ Oh, thanks, you are very kind. Mrs. 
Monroe is very much fatigued by the journey, 
and I’m afraid is hardly able to see any one at 
present.” And mentally I decided that as soon 
as she was better we would go to Laach, which 
was near enough for me to visit my old patient, 
and not near enough for social complications. 

“ Grandmamma and Cousin Donald have 
taken the rooms on the sheltered side,” said 
Dorothy. I’m the only Spartan in the party. 
I have the gable room and the one next door. 
My sitting-room is delightful. I certainly have 
the best view,” and she looked in my face with 
gentle significance. 


126 


THE NEW MOON. 


Aren’t you and Donald going to walk ? ” 
asked the old lady. You needn’t wait on my 
account, you know. Send Williams to me.” 

Not attempting to conceal her unwillingness 
— and I blessed her for that — Dorothy got up 
and left us with a nod of good-bye, and a 
speech of rebellion against the necessity of 
walking one’s legs off, just because one was in 
Switzerland. 

But in spite of this little profession of faith 
intended for me, Dorothy was out all day and 
every day, as it seemed to me, tramping about 
with her cousin. 

I said something of the sort on the first oc- 
casion of my seeing her alone for any length of 
time after our arrival. We were to have tea 
in Dorothy’s sitting-room, whither I had been 
brought to see the view. 

” Well, you see grandmamma is always plan- 
ning outings for Donald and me,” Dorothy 
said, *'and I’m constrained a little (why 


THE NEW MOON. 


127 


shouldn’t I admit it?) by the nearness of your 
wife. I can’t say how glad I was to get her 
message that she was too weak to see stran- 
gers. And still I seem to live under her eye. 
I realise her as I never did before. She is well 
avenged for my long obliviousness of her exis- 
tence. She is terribly alive, terribly real to me 
now. Remember, I’ve never seen her in my 
life, and yet I can’t look out of my window 
but I feel her eyes are on me. When I go out 
or come in with Donald, she is watching us, I 
think, and I’m glad she sees me with him. If 
I stop to speak to you, I feel that in my mere 
‘ Good-morning ’ she will read a history four 
years long, and cry out upon us. The whole 
front of your hotel palpitates with her; every 
window is an eye, every sound is her voice, and 
I start and listen like a thief in hiding. I feel 
now that any moment that door may open, and 
she may stand there looking at me, and saying, 
"Why do you take my husband from me?”’ 


128 


THE NEW MOON. 


I dropped my head in my hands. Oh ! it’s a 
difficult world, my friend, and it isn’t any easier 
since this morning.” 

“What has happened?” I said, without 
looking up. 

“ Donald has — yes, he’s beginning to ask 
questions — ” 

“ Questions? ” 

“Yes, grandmamma too. We had a very 
painful scene this morning.” 

“About—” 

“Yes.” 

“ Why don’t you settle the matter for ever 
by plainly speaking your mind? — about your 
cousin, I mean. After all, you’re a free agent.” 

“ No,” she smiled sadly. “ And I’m always 
so afraid they’ll find out that I’m not free. 
This morning grandmamma said : ‘ I could al- 
most believe you’ve got a foolish infatuation 
for some one else!’ ” 


We sat silent awhile. 


THE NEW MOON. 


129 


“ If the worst came to the worst — ” the girl 
began. 

‘‘Yes?” 

“ If my life with my grandmother became 
unendurable — ” 

“ Well — you would tell me, and we would 
see what — ” 

She shook her head. 

“ No, I should only go away and be alone 
for a while.” 

Her not reckoning with me, as it were, her 
setting me aside, sent a sudden anguish through 
my blood. 

“ If anything happened,” I said, controlling 
my feeling as best I could, “ we would take 
counsel together.” 

‘‘ No, dear friend.” 

‘‘ What do you mean? ” 

‘‘ I should know without asking what your 
counsel, or, at least, what your feeling would 


130 


THE NEW MOON. 


How could you know of me what I don’t 
know of myself? ” 

^^You know, at all events, you would never 
forget the barrier between us.” Her voice was 
low and toneless. “You know that all the- 
ways are barred.” The resignation in her face 
seemed on the instant a disloyalty. But I 
could not find my tongue. “We must try to 
be as reasonable as we can,” she said dully. 
“ We must accept our lives as we find them. 
You are better at acceptance than I.” Then 
she laughed a little — drearily, very drearily. 

“You are quite clear, apparently” — I found 
myself saying — “ remarkably clear in your 
estimate of me.” 

She followed with her eyes as I got up and 
walked the length of the room and back. 

“What’s in the air to-day?” said the girl. 
“ There’s something I haven’t heard before in 
your voice, and a quite new look in your 
face.” 


THE NEW MOON. 


131 


“ Is there ? That's very reprehensible. A 
man should always be exactly the same.” I 
could not have accounted for the sudden sense 
of bitterness that overwhelmed me. Dorothy 
was keenly conscious of the jar, and, woman- 
like, she tried to drop her own bitterness out of 
sight, the better to help me to banish mine. 

Of course no one can always be the same,” 
she said, “ but it’s a comfort sometimes to think 
how steadfast a thing instinct is — how abso- 
lutely safe we are in depending on certain 
characters following certain lines.” 

That’s a dangerous dependence. It might 
easily turn out a broken reed.” 

She shook her head. Instead of soothing, 
her confidence stung me. 

“ No,” she went on unmoved ; “ I know as 
well as if I had the gift of prophecy what you 
would do and say under given circumstances.” 

“ I can only repeat I don’t know myself one 
tenth so well.” 


132 


THE NEW MOON. 


“ But / do,” she said almost perversely. “ I 
would stake my life on your generosity — your 
patience — ” 

Don’t twit me with my patience,” I said 
passionately, half under my breath. ** Oh, for- 
give me; I don’t know what I’m saying.” She 
had started, but was looking at me with a 
quietness that still pricked me on. 

“You surely don’t mind my saying that it 
would be unlike you to — ” 

“Unlike me? What ts like me? Do you 
think a man is like a jar of acid or of salt, with 
its immutable label, and its fixed and war- 
ranted effect? Indeed, it seems to me it 
would be safer to count on his being an en- 
tire laboratory — full of poisons and their anti- 
dotes, and subtle combinations of things never 
mixed before. You may run your mind’s eye 
along the hidden shelves ” — I stopped before 
her in my walk — “and you’ll find nothing 
lacking. I have the world within me! You 


THE NEW MOON. 


133 


have thought there was nothing here but kind- 
ness and good faith, patience and honour; but 
I assure you, you are wrong. There is some- 
thing of every passion under the sun.” 

And yet you are Geoffrey Monroe, and 
not another man. There are things possible to 
your neighbours that are for ever impossible to 
you.” 

How is one to know what is possible or 
what is not? No one is a thief before he has 
considered theft or faced the possibility of 
stealing. My life for a long time brought to 
the surface what you’re pleased to call the 
good qualities — but to say of any natural 
human act or feeling that it’s ' impossible ’ to 
me is to call me something less or more than a 
man. * Unlike me? ’ — there is no ‘ me.’ I am 
fifty people. I am patient and I am intolerant, 
wise and silly, loving and full of hate, indolent 
and raging with energy, trustful and suspicious, 
loyal and treacherous. All, all that human na- 


134 


THE NEW MOON. 


ture has found possible, or has to learn — the 
germ of it all is hereT 

“ And yet ” — the girl’s voice sounded in my 
ears like Fate — “ and yet — it will be the full- 
grown, practised habit of mind that will govern 
in the end. The strongest thing will rule.” 

Yes, but what is strongest? There are sur- 
prises in the answer to that question.” 

Not for you and me.” 

You think not?” 

“ I am sure not.” 

*'You mean you are sure nothing will ever 
be stronger in me than ” — I spoke blundering 
and with difficulty — than the need to accept 
— and — and — respond to old — 'obligations ? ” 

She nodded gravely, looking straight out 
before her. 

“ Does that disappoint you ? ” 

She only shook her head. 

'‘Would you” — I began again, a sick fear 
pulling at my heart — “ would you have me try 


THE NEW MOON. 


135 


to feel differently — would you be ready to 
help me? ” 

Heaven forbid!” 

“ Why ? ” but I was breathing freer again. 

“ Because you would never succeed in feeling 
differently.” 

You think not? ” 

“ I am sure.” Still she sat there statue-like, 
looking across through the window to the 
snow-fields. Neither you nor I am afraid of 
breaking a man-made law” — she spoke with 
a low-pitched monotonous cadence — we are 
both of us afraid of breaking a heart ” — only 
her pale lips moved. '*We are afraid most of 
all of ourselves, and what we would think of 
ourselves.” 

Neither spoke for a moment — then I : 

So it’s only a form of refined selfishness ; we 
are pleasing ourselves in some sorry fashion — ” 

^'We are doing what we must do, and from 
that there’s no escape. Hush! here comes 


136 


THE NEW MOON. 


Donald.” She rang for tea. “ Please stay a 
little while. It will look odd if — ” 

Her cousin walked in with the air of one 
who enters his own house. For once this man, 
and the side of the problem touching him, 
seemed remote to insignificance. But I roused 
myself to the task of seeming to regard him as 
before. 

” How d’you do?” he said, surprised at see- 
ing me there. 

How d’you do ? ” Conversation languished 
while the tea was brought in. 

“ Have you been to the top of the Weisshut 
yet? ” I said. 

“ Yes, since luncheon — just come back. Very 
decent climb. You ought to have come along,” 
he said, looking at Dorothy. 

“ I walked so far this morning,” answered 
the girl, I felt tired.” 

It would have freshened you up. If you’d 
gone with me, you wouldn’t have looked as 


THE NEW MOON. 


137 


tired as you do now ” — which seemed to me 
an impertinent observation. After all, Captain 
M‘Kay did very sensibly affect the outward 
situation. 

“ I don’t believe in overdoing it just because 
one is in Switzerland,” I said. “ It’s a long 
pull to the top of the Weisshut.” 

Again there was a moment’s silence. 

How this fellow disliked me! He couldn’t 
help showing it in every movement. 

‘‘ Awfully jolly dress you’ve got on to-day,” 
he said, looking at his cousin as he passed my 
cup. 

“ You like this? ” She glanced down at her 
frock. 

''Yes, stunning!” I felt myself raging in- 
wardly at the familiarity of his inspection, as 
his eyes roved leisurely up and down Doro- 
thy’s figure. His nonchalance, too, was be- 
ginning to irritate me, as it had done many 
a time in London. Did he often have tea in 


138 


THE NEW MOON. 


Dorothy’s sitting-room? I had never been 
there before. 

“ I’m glad you don’t go in for those floppy 
loose things,” he added, still exploring the 
girl’s figure with his bold eyes. 

I remembered suddenly that I had never 
seen Dorothy except in close-fitting bodices, 
any more than for many years I had been 
accustomed to see my wife in anything but a 
flowing gown. 

“ I loathe tea-gowns,” Dorothy was saying. 

“ Do you? Why, I wonder? ” I asked. 

“ Oh, such untidy things. A woman should 
fight against tea- gowns to her latest breath.” 

Now, I rather like them,” I said, for some- 
thing to say, and because the Captain didn’t. 

I suppose you get used to seeing people 
look like invalids?” he said. 

Hundreds of perfectly healthy women wear 
them in England,” I said stiffly. Isn’t it so. 
Miss Lance? ” 


THE NEW MOON. 


139 


Well, I don’t know. I look upon it as a 
sign of weakness. There’s something flabby in 
the mind or the body of the woman addicted to 
tea-gowns.” 

Just what I say,” said the Captain. 

It was not the first time that Dorothy had, 
quite innocently, stumbled on some character- 
istic of my wife, with loathing and objurgation. 
These trifles had their share in showing up the 
congenital difference in the two women. 

“ I see now. Dr. Monroe, why you once ad- 
mired my ivory satin. The one you said — ” 
She broke off suddenly, giving me a swift look. 
We both remembered the evening before Cap- 
tain M'Kay arrived (one of bur red-letter recol- 
lections), when she had worn that gown, and 
I had told her I never yet had seen her so 
beautiful. 

“ You’ve never told me before that I was 
pretty,” she had said, a little wistfully. 

“ No one will ever call you anything so com- 


140 


THE NEW MOON. 


monplace,” I had answered. “You are beauti- 
ful, very — very beautiful — ” 

“ Which is the gown Dr. Monroe approves? ” 
Captain M‘Kay was saying lazily, as he stirred 
his second cup of tea. 

“ Oh, a white Empire dress, waist up here.” 

Dorothy put her hands under her breast. A 
servant came in. 

“ Mrs. Lance has sent down word that, if Dr. 
Monroe hasn’t gone yet, she would like to see 
him for a moment — there’s no hurry — after tea, 
she says.” 

Dorothy turned to me with a smile. 

“We give you no peace. But you must 
have your second cup.” She poured out the 
dregs of my first. “ Grandmamma was saying 
this morning that you were the best friend she 
had found in the world. All the rest of us were 
poor creatures. She was very emphatic, and 
informed Williams and me that you were a very 


THE NEW MOON. 


141 


good man.” She smiled, and handed me the 
cup. 

How little she knows!” I said, thinking 
how odd it was that this acute old Pagan 
should have fallen into the common error. 

“ My grandmother is a very wise old wo- 
man — ” Dorothy nodded her head sagely. 

Yet even she has lapses, you see.” 

“ You are modest. Dr. Monroe,” said Captain 
M‘Kay superciliously. 

“ It’s conducive to modesty to come to the 
conclusion Miss Lance and I reached some 
weeks ago.” 

What is that? ” 

“That we are all extraordinarily like our 
neighbours.” 

Dorothy threw me a quick appealing glance. 

“ I’m happy to say the resemblance doesn’t 
strike me,” drawled M‘Kay. 

“ But just before you came in,” said Doro- 


142 


THE NEW MOON. 


thy, in pursuit of peace, "'we were agreeing 
that, in spite of our all having the same things 
inside us, the proportions differed, and that 
varied the result.” 

“ I admit the variation, at all events,” said 
her cousin. 

I opened my lips to speak, and Dorothy in- 
terrupted, as if she knew I was about to say 
something not calculated to soothe the Captain. 

What strikes me as stranger than the dis- 
covery of unsuspected deeps in human nature 
— what is far more wonderful — is the very fair 
estimate that we generally make of people.” 

Oh, you think we do our fellows justice, do 
you?” As I spoke I laughed, and Captain 
M'Kay crossed his legs aggressively. 

I mean,” Dorothy persisted, that while 
little things are often wrongly interpreted, in 
the long run a person’s life and character get 
fair judgment as a rule. For a time you see an 
impostor taking people in, but it doesn’t last.” 


THE NEW MOON. 


143 


I should say it frequently did last,” said 
M'Kay gruffly. It’s only the ones that get 
found out that furnish your examples; the 
others, the fellows that keep dark — ” 

No, no ! That’s just what I mean. There’s 
less successful ^ keeping dark ’ than sounds cred- 
ible when you think how many ways there are 
of conscious and unconscious deceit. There’s a 
kind of rough justice ruling the world. People 
find their level.” 

Captain M‘Kay set down his cup and walked 
to the window. He could not have told me 
plainer in words that he considered my visit 
sufficiently prolonged. Dorothy, after a little 
pause, went on as if make talk she must at all 
hazards. 

“ It’s hard enough to make one’s self under- 
stood, but still I believe the essence of charac- 
ter is expressed little by little — gets squeezed 
out by the pressure of circumstances, and 
comes to be recognised. That’s the real mir- 

lO 


144 


THE NEW MOON. 


acle. When it’s so hard to pick one’s way 
among motives, and so easy to misjudge, how 
strange that, after all, we should get a right 
impression in the main ! Something of the real 
person sinks through all the layers of false re- 
port and self-misrepresentation, and discovers 
us the man.” 

*‘What makes you so philosophical all of a 
sudden, Dorothy ? ” M^Kay turned impatiently 
from the window. 

“ Is that what you call it ? ” she smiled. 
Yes, she was looking tired. 

He came and stood behind her chair with his 
hands in his pockets. 

** You never talk like that when we’re alone.” 

It’s plainly my evil influence,” I said. He 
had turned away, pulled up a low chair to her 
side, and sat down. 

I’m trying to get my aunt and cousin to 
make up their minds to come to Scotland next 
month,” he said, looking straight at me for the 


THE NEW MOON. 


145 


first time since greeting me on his entrance. 
“ Don’t you think Scotland might do them 
good? ” 

It might,” I answered, with a calmness I 
marvelled at. 

No, no ! The journey would be too much 
for grandmamma,” said Dorothy. 

‘‘She doesn’t agree with you. You’ll see 
she’ll have her own way, just as she did about 
this Switzerland business.” He stooped and 
picked up the fringe of Dorothy’s sash that lay 
trailing on the floor. It was a soft Indian-silk 
thing that was wound round her waist, and fell 
in long ends to her feet. 

“ Glad I was inspired to bring you this,” he 
said, still playing with the fringe. “ It suits 
you particularly.” 

I stood up. 

“ I’m forgetting Mrs. Lance,” I said, and 
made my adieux. 

“ If grandmamma — she as good as promised 


146 


THE NEW MOON. 


me not to speak of the matter again, but if she 
should mention Scotland — ” 

‘‘Well?” 

“ Please discourage her — please forbid it.” 

“ I doubt if Dr. Monroe finds his veto of any 
use,” said M‘Kay. 

“ You may trust me to make it as eflfective 
as I can,” I said to the girl, and went out. 


Mrs. Lance did not mention Scotland. 

When I got home my wife was asleep. I sat 
down and wrote Dorothy : “ Be sure you tell 
me before you do anything or promise any- 
thing irrevocable. I must see you, and not for 
five minutes — for an hour at least. Where? 
When? Let it be soon. — G. M.” 

Why did I want to see her? What should I 
find to say ? Wasn’t it all up with me ! Why 
did I struggle so desperately in a vain cause? 
Why does a drowning man catch at straws? 


THE NEW MOON. 


147 


Pah ! What fine names we give mere in- 
stinct ! 

The next day, Tuesday, towards evening, as 
I was coming home from a walk, I met Dorothy 
and her cousin about a mile from the village. 

We all walked on together for a bit, and 
then Dorothy suddenly stopped, put her hand 
to her throat, and said, Oh, my scarf! I left 
it in that glen by the big rock. Do you mind, 
Donald — will you — ” 

Oh, of course,” he said, and turned back at 
once. 

We’ll wait here,” Dorothy called after him. 
She stood leaning against a tree, poking the 
pine needles with her light alpenstock, until her 
cousin was out of sight. 

There’s a Fackeltanz in the town on Thurs- 
day night,” she said at last, looking up ; some 
feast or other, and the whole place will be dec- 
orated and illuminated. I’m supposed to be 
going down to Nieder-Fichtenberg to see it, 


148 


THE NEW MOON. 


with Donald and some friends of his that will 
be here by then. At the last moment I’ll in- 
vent some excuse, have a headache or some- 
thing, and stay at home.” 

“ I understand, and I’ll come over to see you 
as soon as — ” 

“ When the others are safely out of the way 
and the household quiet. I’ll hang up a little 
lantern I found the other day. I’ll hang it out 
of the gable window. If anybody sees it, it will 
be taken for an attempt at illumination, but 
you’ll understand it means ^ Come.’ ” She 
smiled the whispered invitation at me with a 
significance she was far from realising. 

Captain M'Kay won’t go when he sees you 
backing out.” 

“ He’ll have to. He has asked a party of 
people over here from Kaltheim to dine with us 
at Laach. If anything goes wrong you won’t 
see the lantern, that’s all.” I nodded. 


THE NEW MOON. 


149 


** Aren’t you tired after your long walk ? 
Why don’t you sit down? ” I said. 

He won’t be five minutes, unless he misses 
the footpath.” She looked towards the thicket 
where Captain M'Kay had disappeared. But 
she dropped down on the pine needles, and set 
her straight back against the tree. I stretched 
myself out at her feet. 

What a glorious day it has been ! ” Dorothy 
said, taking off her little cloth cap and looking 
up through the trees. 

“ Has it ?” I said. 

She came down from the clouds. As she 
met my eyes she flushed a little. 

I admit it’s warm walking. Why don’t 
you take off your cap?” she said. 

” Why should I ? ” 

I like you with it off.” 

“ Why?” 


I want to look at your hair.” 


150 


THE NEW MOON. 


What’s the matter with it ? ” 

“There’s nothing the matter. I like seeing 
it.” 

“You must tell me why.” 

“ Well, you’re making me very personal, but 
it isn’t my fault.” 

“ Go on.” 

“ I noticed your hair the very first thing 
after your six feet and your shoulders. It 
grows so prettily.” 

“ That’s very satisfactory.” 

“ Oh, it’s much more. It’s unique.” 

“ Really?” 

“Yes. Did you never notice how few peo- 
ple’s hair fits them ? ” 

“ Can’t say I have.” 

“ Well now, just think of it. It’s rare^r than 
a good nose. Think of poor Captain M‘Kay. 
His hair is like a badly cut wig that has slipped 
back an inch.” We laughed with infinite zest. 
“The reason that so many women wear their 


THE NEW MOON. 


151 


hair plastered over their eyes is because it fits 
their foreheads so badly that they have to cover 
up as much as possible.” 

I found myself visualising my wife’s smooth 
and carefully dressed head. Again I thought : 
It’s like carved pine ; and I looked up at Doro- 
thy. ” How about hair? ” I said. 

” Oh, mine’s a perfect fit,” she laughed. But 
you would never have known it if I hadn’t dex- 
terously led the conversation that way.” She 
leaned forward to see if Captain M'Kay was in 
sight. 

** Doesn’t the weight of your hair ever make 
your head ache ? ” 

No. What a notion ! ” 

” You have a great deal.” 

“That’s a sign of strength. Sickly people 
have poor, thin hair. If I were to get ill my 
hair would fall out. The story of Samson is 
very good symbolism. The seat of strength is 
in the hair.” 


152 


THE NEW MOON. 


I laughed. 

“ Perfectly true,” she insisted, smiling. The 
hair is a reservoir of electricity. You ought to 
see how mine snaps and sparkles if I brush it in 
a dark room in the winter.” 

I should be delighted to see it in a dark 
room.” 

Never mind if I am Irish. You know what 
I mean. Men of an effete race lose their hair 
early. You never yet saw a very strong person 
who had thin dead-looking hair. Now did 
you?” 

I didn’t answer at once. I was wondering if 
she would ever see my wife. 

Has anything more been said about Scot- 
land? ” I asked. 

‘'No, thank heaven! Don’t let us think 
about it.” 

I watched a black spider picking his way over 
the needles. “ He’s making for you,” I said, 
instinctively expecting to hear a scream. Doro- 


THE NEW MOON. 


153 


thy held out a dry twig to turn the little crea- 
ture’s course. But he climbed the obstacle, and 
kept on in her direction. She presented the 
twig again. 

“ Donald is a goose about knowing his way 
in the woods. I’m sure he hasn’t found the 
short cut to the glen.” 

You are very impatient to have him back.” 

She looked up at me and smiled. It was an 
eloquent enough denial. 

” Why do you oppose the good intention of 
that insect? ” 

How do you know he has good inten- 
tions ? ” 

Has your education been so neglected you 
don’t know it’s good luck to have a spider come 
towards you ? ” 

“Is it? ” she laughed. “ Then I prefer to be 
unlucky. Go back, you beast.” She at last 
succeeded in discouraging his advances. He 
made off to one side. 


154 


THE NEW MOON. 


Are you afraid of him ? ” 

"'No, but he’s not pretty.” 

“ What is your pet superstition? ” 

“ I’m afraid I haven’t one — except believing 
through thick and thin that things will turn out 
all right.” 

She leaned back and looked up through the 
pine branches. 

" Oh, but it’s a day out of Paradise,” she 
said softly, drawing in a long breath. " How 
glorious it would be if you and I — ” 

"If you and I — ?” But she only smiled, 
still looking up. 

It suddenly flashed over me what was the 
inner meaning, the physical basis, as it were, of 
the charm this woman cast over me. It was 
the spell of superb health. I had known women 
whose beauty was more rare, more arresting to 
the first glance, but I had never known a human 
being more sound and sane than the woman 
before me. Her very cleverness was of the 


THE NEW MOON. 


155 


wholesome, home-grown kind. There was noth- 
ing in it forced or exotic, or out of the norm. 

All my life at home and abroad I had been 
fighting Disease. Here was a creature crowned 
and glorified by victory in the battle I had seen 
lost by day and by night for twenty years. It 
seemed to me, thinking back, that I had looked 
on nothing but defeat all my days, until that 
morning when I first saw Dorothy Lance. 

I looked again at the easy pose of her strong 
young body — the slim waist, not pinched nor 
too hardly outlined, the generous breast, the 
shoulders well set back, the strongly shod and 
shapely feet thrust out from under the Alpine 
frock, the slender ankles, the look of supple 
grace through all the figure, the kind of grace 
no art can counterfeit — and I said to myself, 
“This is the sort of creature our labour and our 
science are striving to make the type.” 

“ Penny for your thoughts,” she said, drop- 
ping her chin and looking at me. 


156 


THE NEW MOON. 


“ I wish you wouldn’t say that,” I answered, 
on an impulse. 

‘‘Why not?” 

It was very idiotic. My only reason was 
that the phrase was often on the lips of my 
wife. “Oh, it doesn’t sound like you. But I 
was thinking — ” 

“ Yes?” 

To myself I said, “Thinking you should be 
the mother of sons” — aloud: 

“ Thinking how iniquitous it was that I should 
be condemning you to perpetual maidenhood.” 

“Geoffrey!” It was a curious, passionate 
intonation — like a protest, like a prayer. She 
had never called me by my name before. I 
felt as if she had kissed me on the mouth. 

“We settled all that long ago,” she said in 
the pause. “ You are not thinking that I — that 
I — ” I waited. “You don’t think I would 
give up my right to love you for all the other 
good things in life — do you ? ” 


THE NEW MOON. 


157 


‘'What are the other good things, Dorothy ? 

“ Home and children, I suppose.” She was 
looking straight before her through the forest. 
As I watched her I saw the tears gather in her 
eyes. Ah yes! we had been thinking the 
same thought, my love and I. 


As she shifted her position on the pine-needle 
bed, a roughness in the bark of the tree she 
leaned against caught her hair. She struggled 
a moment to free herself. 

“ Shall I help you ? ” I said, getting up. 

“ No, no, please,” she said earnestly. With 
upraised arms she tried to pull the hair free. I 
lay down in my former position and watched 
her. She took out several hairpins and threw 
them in her lap. I saw she was making mat- 
ters worse. I drew myself nearer and put up 
my hand to help. 

“ No, no, ril do it myself,” she said hur- 


158 


THE NEW MOON. 


riedly, and wrenched herself away by main 
force. The action brought a twitch of pain to 
her face. She laughed a little ruefully. 

“ It’s all right now.” 

‘‘All right!” I said indignantly. “You’ve 
hurt yourself horribly.” She shook her head, 
and the loosened hair came tumbling about her 
shoulders like a mantle. She gathered it up 
hurriedly and twisted it into a great rope. I 
handed her the hairpins. She took them gin- 
gerly. It almost seemed as if she were at pains 
not to touch my fingers. 

“ Lean forward,” I said, when she had put in 
the last pin. She did as I asked, looking back 
over her shoulder. Two or three tangled hairs 
were clinging to a low-growing twig. I un- 
twisted them gently, with a sense that I would 
hurt her if I were not careful. When they 
were freed, I laid the little tangled skein in my 
note-book. 

“ How quiet we are ! ” said Dorothy, in a half- 


THE NEW MOON. 


159 


whisper, looking from me to the lock as it lay 
in my book. 

I could have saved you this,” I said. 
“Thenj^^^ wouldn’t have had it.” 

If you’d let me untangle it — ” 

” Oh, I’ve plenty left.” 

Why wouldn’t you let me help you ? ” 

” I thought I could do it myself.” 

'' No, you didn’t.” 

What do you mean ? ” 

You were afraid,” I whispered. 

Afraid ? ” she echoed under her breath. 
“Yes, you are afraid to let me come near 
you. You are afraid to let me touch you.” 

We looked into each other’s faces till she 
dropped her eyes. Something crackled in the 
wood. I stood up. The moment after Captain 
M'Kay came striding through the trees. 

“Well, Donald, did you lose your way again ? ” 
Dorothy said, as he came up to us. 

How I hated to hear her call him Donald ! 


160 


THE NEW MOON. 


I GOT through the next day somehow, and 
Thursday, the last day of the old life, dragged 
itself towards evening. 

Millicent had suffered from one of her head- 
aches ever since breakfast. I found my own 
head beginning to throb and swim after sitting 
all the long bright afternoon in the darkened 
room beside her. 

Once I got up and went into the sitting- 
room to breathe the fine mountain air at the 
half-open window, to look at the eternal hills, 
to watch the window in the chalet over the 
way. Was Dorothy sitting in that pretty 
room of hers with her stupid cousin? What 
was she looking like as he pressed his suit? 
Was he close beside her there, stroking the 
fringe of her scarf? What was he daring to 
say to her? What was she thinking? How 
was it going to end ? Why had I asked for an 
interview? There was nothing to say. Noth- 


THE NEW MOON. 


161 


ing — nothing! I leaned my forehead against 
the window-frame, and my spirit went headlong 
down into that nameless abyss where men's 
souls are racked and tortured out of their reason 
— out of their humanity. Why should I go on 
weakly suffering? I groaned. I had not been 
half so much cursed by untoward — outward — 
circumstance as I had been by cowardice. I 
hadn’t the courage to be true to my love. I 
hadn’t enough common honesty to stop lying. 
I hadn’t the nerve to outrage conventionality. 
Dorothy loved me well enough (I believed it 
even in that black hour) to go away with me. 
I had enough to provide for my wife and to 
live on besides. If I let things drift, Dorothy 
would be harassed into marrying her cousin, 
and — I set my teeth. 

Really Fate was in the Devil’s own mood 
when she measured my life’s portion out. Now 
if I had had an unfaithful wife I might squeeze 
some excuse for myself out of the situation. If 


162 


THE NEW MOON. 


she ate opium, or drank, or even were a shrew ! 
But no, the tragedy was much less obvious and 
popular. It was summed up in the fact that I 
had not met the woman I could love with all 
the strength of my body and soul until I had 
been married fifteen years. 

It was not as if my present life made any one 
happy, I reasoned, groping still in that pit of 
blackness. - My wife had forgotten the art of 
being glad. Life would be much the same to 
her if I were dead. She would still have her 
nurses and her comforts about her, her novels 
and her palmists and fortune-tellers, her evil 
prophecies to lend a lurid interest to the future, 
her new moons — If I see it the third time, 
I shall know what it means,” she had said in 
London a fortnight ago, with the horror of 
death in her hollow eyes. What if she should 
see it the third time? What if, in her present 
lowered state — ? The ugly thought fastened 
its fangs in me, and I struggled in vain to throw 


THE NEW MOON. 


163 


it off. I found myself taking part in a little 
drama that improvised itself before me like 
some magic show. I saw myself coming home 
from a visit to Dorothy. It was half-past five. 
I would come up the steps of the hotel, I would 
look back at the chalet, and there, just over the 
gable, in full view of our sitting-room window, 
behold the silver sickle shining sharp and clear. 
I could see myself standing horror-stricken a 
moment, afraid to come in. Had Millicent seen 
it? I would come slowly upstairs. Half-way 
up I would stop to listen, gripping the banisters 
hard. No crying, no hurrying maids, no sound 
whatever. “ As still as death I would think, 
and go in. I would find my wife in her own 
room looking stronger and brighter than usual. 
She would be turning over some ribbons and 
laces. I would go into the sitting-room. The 
new moon would look in at the window. Had 
my wife followed me, I would wonder — was 
she standing horror-stricken at the door? I 


164 


THE NEW MOON. 


would not dare to turn and see. Then sud- 
denly I would think, If she hasn’t seen it al- 
ready she will, unless I prevent it. If I don’t 
draw down that blind — The self within my- 
self grew giddy before the fancied problem. If 
I should find myself face to face with that situ- 
ation, would I or would I not draw down the 
blind? I wrestled with the black uncertainty 
down there in the pit until my power to think 
and weigh seemed to desert me. I leaned 
against the window-frame and shut my eyes. 
My wife’s face, as she looked long ago, rose 
before me. Ah, how pretty she used to be! 
No, no! . With a sense of jar and horror I 
stood up. “ There’s no doubt, no doubt at 
all,” I said to myself, I would draw down the 
devilish blind.” 

Scarcely had I tasted the comfort of this 
conviction when I said to myself, “ Oh, you’d 
pull down the blind of course, just out of sheer 
cowardice. You aren’t afraid or ashamed to 


THE NEW MOON. 


165 


think any horror, but you haven’t got the 
nerve to carry out your own wishes. In an 
honester age you’d have settled the matter 
long ago by dagger or bowl, or open desertion, 
and paid your penalty like a man. But you — 
you’ll save your wife’s life out of mere physical 
sensitiveness and shrinking of the nerves. 
That’s the cloak that civilisation wraps round 
honest, old-fashioned violence. So long as its 
lusty nakedness is hidden, we are content to 
sing hymns to Progress.” 


Out of the depths I heard a voice calling, 
Geoffrey ! Geoffrey ! ” 

I lifted my head and listened. 

Geoffrey ! ” It was my wife’s voice from 
the inner room. As I turned to go, Dorothy 
came to her window with a vase and a bunch 
of wild flowers. She saw me instantly, and 
made me a sign. She began to arrange the 


166 


THE NEW MOON. 


flowers on the wide window-seat. When she 
had put in a bunch of columbine or an Alpine 
rose, she would lift the vase up for my in- 
spection, with a gay little ‘‘ How-do-you-like- 
that?” air. 

She was dressed in some soft grey stufT, with 
a crimson jerkin under the outer coat. I was 
glad she hadn’t put on the Indian scarf again. 
She had a little red cap on her head. She’s 
been out, I thought, as I noticed how her wavy 
hair was tossed and roughened. The late sun- 
shine slanted into her room, glorifying her as it 
passed. It touched every pane of glass on that 
side of the chalet, and turned them all to ruddy 
fire. 

The vase was full. She turned away to put 
it somewhere in the room. She came back 
with one spray of white bells left in her hand, 
and made me a little salute with it. Then she 
fastened it at her throat, and leaned against 
the window-frame idly smiling. What does 


THE NEW MOON. 


167 


she mean ? I thought, clenching my hands. 
Why does she deck herself out with all her 
holiday airs, when she knows what I must be 
suffering; when, if half her professions were 
true, she would be suffering too? Bah! have 
women any hearts after all, or are they merely 
a more or less ^‘fair perdition” to us all? 
Dorothy had started out of her lazy attitude 
with a look of alarm. She was staring across 
at me with frightened eyes. Why, of course, 
my black looks have startled her. I shook my 
head and tried to smile. She drew back from 
the window, and made a little motion beckon- 
ing m‘e over. 

“Geoffrey!” called the voice from within, 
this time edged with impatience. “You prom- 
ised not to leave me.” 

So I did, I thought, “ in sickness and in 
health, until — ” I turned away from the sun- 
set and the vision over the way, and went back 
into the dark. I sat there till dinner-time. 


168 


THE NEW MOON. 


After dinner, I came up to say good-night. 
There was only a single candle burning under 
a shade. Milly was sitting propped against the 
pillows, still dressed, and with a white shawl 
round her. The face, that neither years nor 
ill-health could rob of its delicate purity, was 
turned expectantly to the door. 

Oh, here you are! YouVe been away an 
eternity. Jiffy dear. I’m tired of being here,” 
she said. “You must carry me into the sit- 
ting-room.” 

“Why, it’s time you went to bed,” I an- 
swered, holding my watch near the dim light. 

“ No ; I’m not sleepy, and I’m frightfully 
nervous. No, I’m not going to take any nasty 
medicine. All I want is to go into the next 
room, and you shall sit by me and we’ll talk.” 

“You’d much better go to bed.” 

She caught sight of the cap I held in my 
hand. “ Oh, were you going to walk? ” 


“ Yes,” I said. 


THE NEW MOON. 


169 


“ Geoffrey ! I can’t be left all alone.” 

Where is Watson ? ” 

“ She’s gone to see the illuminations. 
They’re having some kind of festivity down 
in the town, and I told Watson she might go 
with Teresa and the rest, and that you’d stay 
with me. You don’t care for illuminations, 
Jiffy-” 

I suppose not,” I said, vaguely wondering 
if the lantern were lit in the gable of the chalet. 

“ Come, put down your cap and carry me in. 
I feel so shaky to-night I thought I wouldn’t 
try to walk.” 

Wait till I get the sofa ready,” I said, and 
I went into the sitting-room. The chalet was 
dark. I drew down the flimsy white blind, 
thinking, with a sense of horror, of my waking 
dream of the early evening. I turned up the 
electric light, and piled the cushions on the 
sofa. As I carried Millicent in, she cried out. 
Oh, the horrid glare ! I think you might re- 


170 


THE NEW MOON. 


member, Geoffrey, how I hate that hideous 
light. It goes through my head like knives. 
Put it out, and bring the candle.” I laid her 
down, covered her up, and obeyed, stopping 
only to say, I can’t read to you, you know, 
by that one wretched candle.” 

Don’t want to be read to. I’m nervous 
and keep thinking horrors. Mimi wants you 
to talk.” 

So I brought in the candle and sat down in 
the uncertain light with my back to the win- 
dow, thinking doggedly. I’ll see if I can’t for- 
get the chalet for a while. 

“Just feel my hands, Geoffrey; they’re like 
ice,” my wife said. I chafed them slowly. 

“ Geoffrey, what’s the day of the month? ” 

“The 1st of August.” 

“ How long have we been here? ” 

“Two weeks.” 

“ No, surely it’s three.” 

“ No, two.” 


THE NEW MOON. 


171 


Jiffy, Tm sure it’s longer.” 

“Why are you sure? You never know the 
day of the month.” 

“ Well, you see, I thought I’d keep count 
this time for a special reason. And I believe 
you’re mistaken. But I’ve mislaid my almanac.” 

We were silent awhile. 

“ I told you I felt sure they were either en- 
gaged then, or would be soon, didn’t I ? ” 

“ Who’s engaged ? ” I said. 

“ Now who is there here to be engaged, 
except Dorothy Lance? Don’t wool-gather, 
Geoffrey!” 

“ Oh!” 

“Yes, Watson says they’re to be married al- 
most at once. Didn’t you know?” 

“ No, and you can’t depend on servants’ 
gossip.” 

“ I don’t see any reason to doubt it. After 
all, you know, if she’s ever going to marry she’d 
better be about it.” 


172 


THE NEW MOON. 


I dropped the hand I had been stroking, and 
leaned back in my chair. 

“ It seems foreordained, too,” she went on. 

Donald and Dorothy — they go together beau- 
tifully, don’t they ? ” 

I suppose they do,” I answered. 

“ I shouldn’t wonder, now, if Mrs. Sander- 
son could have told her years ago that there 
was a letter D in her hand on the Mount 
of—” 

For heaven’s sake don’t talk such rubbish !” 
I said, jumping up and making an excuse to 
adjust the candle-shade. 

“ How impatient you are, Geoffrey ! I wish 
you wouldn’t fly out like that. You forget 
palmistry is a science.” 

As I turned back to my seat I saw a gleam 
of light through the white blind. I stopped 
short in the middle of the room. It must come 
from the chalet. I said to myself, ** Dorothy is 
waiting and alone.” 


THE NEW MOON. 


173 


‘‘What are you looking at, Geoffrey?” said 
my wife. 

“ Oh, nothing,” I answered quickly, thinking 
she might conceivably connect my wanting to 
go for a walk at this unusual hour with the sig- 
nal in Dorothy’s window, if she should see it. 
I turned away from the milky gleam and sat 
down. 

My wife was a little in the shadow, but she 
seemed to be staring straight before her. Was 
she looking at the light through the curtains? 
Was she puzzling its meaning out? Or was 
she merely looking at vacancy, unseeing, un- 
thinking? When she spoke I would know. I 
would wait. I wished I could see her more 
clearly. It was uncanny sitting there in the 
half-light, with that white face staring as if at 
some phantom over my shoulder. Why didn’t 
she speak? I felt my own voice would sound 
strange. I dared not break the silence. Was 
it possible she was asleep? I sat rigidly as if 


174 


THE NEW MOON. 


held in a vice. What was Dorothy thinking? 
What would happen if I didn’t go at all ? Surely 
Millicent had gone to sleep. I could slip away 
presently. But she had dropped off very sud- 
denly. Suppose she is dead? thought, and 
shivered slightly. But no more than sculptured 
stone did the white face opposite give sign or 
sound. The sense of horror deepened about 
me. Why didn’t I speak? Why couldn’t I 
move? What was going on in this darkened 
room? Where was everybody? The place 
was as silent as the grave. Only we two 
were left staring at each other through the 
gloom. 

Suddenly with a little crash the candle-shade 
and brass holder fell to the ground, and a host 
of shadows started up with crazy antics, like 
a troop of devils fleeing before the light. I 
jumped to my feet with an exclamation, and 
went across the room with a feeling of relief to 
put the clumsy contrivance right. I picked it 


THE NEW MOON. 


175 


up off the floor, and turned with it in my hand 
to look at my wife. She lay there, staring 
with dilated eyes at the faint light that filtered 
through the blind — fainter now than before the 
shade fell down. What did it mean? Then 
for the first time it flashed through me, She 
thmks ifs the new moon / ” She had seen it 
for the third time ! Milly ! ” I rushed across 
the room and knelt beside her. ** Milly, Milly ! ” 
I took her cold hands. She turned her face 
towards me and hid it in my shoulder. My 
dear,” I began, *‘it isn’t — ” I stopped short. 
Perhaps she knows more than I imagine — Dor- 
othy’s servants — Watson — -windows opposite — 
she may guess it’s a signal. “ What’s the mat- 
ter, Milly?” I said, struggling in a coil of con- 
flicting impulses. 

She gave a little moan. 

What is it? Are you in pain? ” 

No answer. 

“ Milly, tell me what has come over you.” 


12 


176 


THE NEW MOON. 


Don’t leave me,” she whispered, clinging 
closer. 

“No, no, of course not.” That sounds as if 
she suspected the truth, I parleyed inwardly. 
But, at the same time, and through everything, 
I seemed to know that I was perfectly con- 
scious she suspected nothing, and that I was 
only pretending to myself that I thought she 
did. I was excusing myself to myself for not 
undeceiving her. Something of all this rose 
to the surface, where subconscious thought at 
last lifts up its drowned white face and calls for 
recognition. 

“ Milly,” I said, “ did you mistake that light 
in the window for the new moon? It was 
nothing on earth but a lamp.” 

“ Dear boy,” she said softly. 

“ Don’t you believe me ? ” I said. 

“You remembered it was the third time,” 
she said, with a weak little break in her voice. 


THE NEW MOON. 


177 


** Don’t you suppose I saw it in your face, dear, 
when you sat there so long like a stone? ” 

But it wasn’t — it wasn’t the moon at all, I 
swear it wasn’t ! ” Her closed eyelids quivered 
slightly. ” But look ! you shall see for your- 
self.” I ran to the window. As I put my 
hand on the cord I heard voices across at the 
chalet. Captain McKay’s I recognised. A 
party seemed to be going up the narrow path 
towards the house. I jerked up the blind. 
The window in the gable was lampless and 
black. Dorothy had heard the approaching 
party before I had, and withdrawn the light. 
Downstairs at the side of the chalet a shaft of 
light fell out of an open door. I turned away. 
My wife was clutching the shawl round her 
throat, leaning forward and looking through 
the window with feverish excitement. 

‘'Well? Where’s your new moon?” I said, 
with an attempt at a laugh. 


178 


THE NEW MOON. 


“ Hidden under a cloud.** She dropped 
back on her cushions. 

On my word of honour, Milly, it wasn’t the 
moon.” 

“ It wasn’t a lamp, dear. Please take me 
back to bed.” 

I did so, and sat beside her. I tried by 
every means in my power to shake her fixed 
belief. She seemed hardly to hear my argu- 
ments and questions. 

Don’t you know there won’t be a new 
moon for a week? Answer me,” I said at last, 
almost roughly. 

“ I saw it,” was all I could get out of her. 

But you didn't see it. Rouse yourself and 
think about it rationally. Where’s your al- 
manac? ” 

It’s mislaid. Watson couldn’t find it.” 

Well, at any rate, you know when you saw 
the last new moon.” 

She shivered. 


THE NEW MOON. 


179 


Yes, I remember, and this is the third time 
— through glass.” 

But you can’t have a new moon oftener 
than every four weeks. Now listen. You saw 
the last on the loth of July.” 

‘‘Was it? How do you happen to re- 
member?” 

“ It was — ” “ Dorothy’s birthday,” I said to 
myself ; aloud — “ It was the day before we 
made up our minds to come here. I wrote to 
Seton Smith the next morning, the nth, to 
ask him to take charge. Now this is the ist of 
August. With the best will in the world we 
can’t have a new moon for you till next week. 
Now are you satisfied?” 

“Dear Geoffrey! You’d say anything to 
hide the truth from me.” 

“ Milly, I give you my word of honour. 
You don’t think I would lie to you, do you ? ” 

“No, dear. But you can be mistaken. I 
always get mixed up about dates. Oh dear — ” 


180 


THE NEW MOON. 


she sighed out a long, hopeless, feeble breath, 
and closed her eyes. I felt her pulse — it was 
scarcely perceptible. I jumped up and rang 
the bell. The crude sound pierced the empty 
house, setting my nerves on edge. 

“ Geoffrey, Geoffrey ! ” moaned my wife. I 
waited impatiently. I walked back and forth, 
and rang again. 

Everybody’s gone to the fete^^' my wife 
said, in a low despairing voice. I could hardly 
hear the words. I went into the sitting-room 
and turned up the light. I opened my medi- 
cine-case and hurriedly selected a phial. No 
glass. I looked all about in vain. I’ll be 
back in a moment,” I said, going into Milly’s 
room to get the candle. Downstairs all was 
dark, except for the light in the hall. I 
fumbled about the great dining-room, in the 
wing, by my feeble candle-gleam. No wine- 
glasses on the sideboard. Milly hated the 
great thick tumblers. I opened a cupboard. 


THE NEW MOON. 


181 


I remember distinctly the pinked yellow paper 
that hung down from the shelves below the 
rows and rows of glasses. Just as I was taking 
down a sherry-glass, a bell struck sharply on 
the silence. Who can that be ringing ? I 
thought. Oh, those Americans, no doubt, on 
the second floor. But no ; they had gone into 
the village. I remembered their leaving the 
dinner-table so as to lose nothing of the cele- 
bration. I had set the candle on the deep 
lower shelf, and was looking through the wine- 
glass to see if it was clean. Suddenly it 
flashed across me that it might have been 
Milly ringing. I ran upstairs, two steps at ^ 
time, with the wine-glass in my hand, and my 
heart thumping in my body. 

Milly!” I called, when I got to my wife’s 
door. No answer. She is dead,” I said to 
myself. The first thought that came after was. 
Well, she won’t complain of the glare now,” 
and I felt my way in the dark to the electric 


182 


THE NEW MOON. 


fixture. I turned up the light. She was lying 
on the floor by the mantelpiece, under the bell. 
I lifted her up and carried her to the bed. 

*'No, she’s not dead,” I saw in a moment; 
but so bent on trifles is the mind sometimes in 
a crisis, that my one concern was that, since 
she was not dead, she would be vexed now 
that I’d hurried upstairs without the candle 
and lit the abhorred electric light. But I 
caught up the wine-glass and hurried into the 
sitting-room for the restorative. She was 
already reviving when I came back and held 
it to her lips. 

'' O Geoffrey, I’m dying!” 

“ No, you’re not,” I said. ‘‘ You fainted — 
that was all.” 

Oh, but you’ve no idea of the horrible feel- 
ing I had after you went out. I was sure I was 
going to die before you got back. I thought 
I’d never reach the bell. It seemed miles away. ” 


THE NEW MOON, 


183 


''You’ll be all right presently.” I held her 
wrist. 

" Geoffrey, how can you go on saying so 
calmly I’m going to get well, when you know 
I’m dying ?’J_ 

" If you make up your mind to die, I may 
not be able to save you — but if you — ” 

" Oh, I felt it coming even before I saw the 
third warning!” 

"What’s to be done?” I thought, baffled 
and hopeless, and yet afraid to cease from 
striving to set her right. If I relaxed my 
strong endeavours for a moment, I seemed to 
be tacitly contriving she should die. I had 
come to feel my honour grappled to her life. 

" Milly,” I said, " when will Watson get 
back?” 

" Oh, not till late, I should think. She 

never knows when to come home — ” She 

* 

wandered on about Watson’s shortcomings. 


184 


THE NEW MOON. 


Will you mind being alone for ten min- 
utes?’’ I said. 

Alone?” 

Yes, not longer than ten or fifteen minutes. 
You’re all right now, and I’ll come back and 
read you to sleep.” 

Oh, go if you want to.” She turned her 
face to the wall. 

It was a very injured tone, but it was per- 
mission. I saw she was in no instant danger. 

Only ten minutes,” I repeated, and ran 
downstairs. I opened the front door. All 
dark at the chalet. I ran up the steep little 
path and knocked at the door. How sweet 
the pungent air was! 

Is Miss Lance at home?” I said to the 
maid. 

“Yes, sir.” 

“ Tell her Dr. Monroe would like to see her, 
please.” 

I was shown into the empty drawing-room. 


THE NEW MOON. 


185 


I could hear Captain M‘Kay’s deep voice and 
his laugh, as the servant opened some door. 
Dorothy came running in, tall and fair, and 
dressed in the gown we, laughing, had called 
white samite, mystic, wonderful.” 

Dear friend,” she almost whispered, giving 
me her hand. Donald has brought his party 
back, and — ” 

‘‘You must come over to the Schweitzerhof, 
please,” I said, speaking rapidly, “ and tell my 
wife that you had a light in your window this 
evening.” 

“ Are you mad ? ” She dropped my hand 
and drew back. 

“ No ; don’t lose a moment, please. Tell her 
you put the light out when you heard your 
cousin coming back.” 

“But, my friend, what are you saying? 
What has happened?” 

“Only that she is ill and not quite respon- 
sible. She saw it dimly through a white blind. 


186 


THE NEW MOON. 


She imagines that it was the new moon, and 
she is superstitious about it. She has been 
very ill.” 

Do you realise you are asking me to tell 
her I put out a signal?” 

No need to explain. There are illumina- 
tions everywhere. Will you come back with 
me now? ” 

Geoffrey, I’ve never seen your wife. Do 
you really want me to go to-night? ” 

A kind of strangeness had come over us. 
She seemed for the moment as remote as some 
casual acquaintance. I began to apologise for 
troubling her. 

Geoffrey,” she cried out, what has hap- 
pened? Why do you treat me like a stranger? 
Will I come? Why, I would die for you. 
Only the thing you asked seemed strange at 
first. Just think a moment. I was to use this 
signal to tell you you could come secretly and 
visit me. I have a fright and withdraw the 


THE NEW MOON. 


187 


signal, and you come, nevertheless, and ask me 
to make my first visit to your wife for the pur- 
pose of telling her what I’d been doing.” 

'^You have only to say you heard she was 
worse, and came to inquire about her. And 
bring in the illuminations. Oh, you’ll see what 
to do.” I turned nervously to go. 

Geoffrey ” — she caught my arm — ** how 
changed you are! You — you — you are not 
caring less for me?” 

‘^No, no, of course not.” She was looking 
up into my face with beseeching eyes. No, 
dear,” I said again, with a catch in my breath. 

“ Dear friend,” she said, very low, don’t be 
formal and strange to me. I can’t bear it.” 
She was trembling. I had never seen her so 
moved. “Think,” she went on, pouring out 
the words in a rapid whisper, “ ever since Tues- 
day I’ve been dreaming of this evening. I got 
the people off, and I sat waiting in my own 
room in a fever of impatience till it was dark 


188 


THE NEW MOON. 


enough to hang the signal out. I put on the 
white gown that you like, and sat in the dusk 
behind the lantern, waiting — and dreaming — 
and carhtg, dear” — she dropped her head on 
my arm with a little sob — “ caring as I never 
cared before. And the end is, you come and 
ask me to go and see your wife and tell her — 
tell her — ” Her grasp tightened on my sleeve. 

Come, be my brave friend and help me.” 
I laid my hand on her hair, and trembled at 
the strange rapture of the contact. She lifted 
up her face. 

''You know there’s nothing I wouldn’t do 
for you,” she said. We stood looking at each 
other — her breath came in soft pants between 
red parted lips, her eyes swam into mine. 
Every fibre of my being yearned towards her. 

" God ! ” I cried, in a horrible anguish of 
longing and of pain, and we seemed to go 
down together beneath a flood. I held her in 
my arms, and we swayed like sea-tangle before 


THE NEW MOON. 


189 


the strong incoming tide. I buried my face 
in her hair — I kissed her mouth and neck. 

” Geoffrey ” — she seemed weakly to set her 
crippled strength against the torrent of my 
passion — “ Geoffrey, Geoffrey — think ! after five 
years — five years of patience and denial — think, 
think! Let me go before we begin to hate 
ourselves.” She struggled out of my arms. 

“ It is too late,” she said sombrely. I did 
not try to fit a meaning to her words. I 
looked at her for a moment standing straight 
and almost defiant, in her shining white robes 
under the light, with that new look in her face. 

I turned away from her without another 
word, and found myself out in the piney air, 
stumbling headlong down the narrow path. 

Running along the road to the Schweitzer- 
hof, I saw a bright light flickering through the 
far windows of the wing. 

*^Some of them are back from the fete^'^ I 
thought vacantly. 


190 


THE NEW MOON. 


As I crossed the cobbled court in front of 
the house, the light fell on a big stone that 
was sometimes used by people in mounting 
their horses. Day by day since our arrival I 
had noticed, as I passed, a rusty horse-shoe 
lying there. A dozen times I had said to 
myself, If that could be seen from Milly’s 
window it wouldn’t be there long.” The ghost 
of the old thought flitted before me now as I 
ran up the steps of the house. It stopped me 
in the doorway ; it turned me back and set me 
blindly groping about the stone. The horse- 
shoe seemed to have been removed. I was 
angry to find some one had been before me. 

” Milly would have thought it such good 
luck,” I said to myself, feeling the cobbled 
ground in the shadow of the stone. I was con- 
scious of a dreary pleasure when I grazed my 
wrist against the symbol in the dark. I 
snatched up the heavy spiked old shoe and ran 
upstairs, leaving the front door wide open. 


THE NEW MOON. 


191 


The flood of electric light half blinded me as 
I burst into Milly’s room. She was lying just 
as I had left her, with tired open eyes. 

“Was I long?” I said. 

“ Oh, everything’s long. Life’s long — dy- 
ing’s long — ” She broke off. “ But I’ve been 
thinking, Geoffrey.” 

“Yes?” I had laid down the horse-shoe 
unobserved. I began to feel ashamed of hav- 
ing brought the dirty thing into the house. 

“ I’m afraid, dear, I’ve been a trial to you 
sometimes. You’re so good and kind, and I 
haven’t been as conscious of it as I ought to 
have been — but things get clearer at the last.” 

“Hush, hush! — you must think of nothing 
but getting well. You’ll have years and years 
to consider all your other affairs.” 

“ Geoffrey, I wish you’d come and kiss me.” 

I bent over her and she lifted up her face. 

“ You haven’t kissed me. Jiffy, for a long, long 

time.” She pressed her face against me. The 
13 


192 


THE NEW MOON. 


sensation returned upon me of Dorothy’s body 
warm in my arms, and the touch of her lips as 
I kissed them again and again, without appeas- 
ing my strong need. 

“Jiffy.” The weak voice brought me to 
myself. “ I think people who are not taken 
unawares, those who are warned, ought to say 
* Thank you ! ’ like a well-mannered guest, be- 
fore they go. Dear, you’ve been so good to 
me. You’ve never done anything but kindness 
to me all our lives.” 

She put her hand on mine. 

“ Hush, hush ! ” I said hoarsely. 

“Why hush? Won’t you be glad after- 
wards to know that I lay here the night before 
I died, thinking over all the years we’ve spent 
together — and that I told myself you hadn’t 
given me a single memory in all that time that 
I couldn’t say ^ Thank you ’ for? Is that such a 
little thing?” She smoothed my hair as I sat 
with bent head, silent. “ Why, dear. I’d rather 


THE NEW MOON. 


193 


have that said to me at the last,” she went on, 
“ than any glory or great honour.” I tried 
to speak, but my throat was dry. And next 
to having deserved to hear it from my hus- 
band ” — her changed voice kept crooning on 
— “ I should choose that I might say it to 
him. Doesn't it make you happy. Jiffy, to 
think how good you’ve been to me all these 
years? ” 

I’ve not been good to you,” I said. 

*^Yes, you have, dear; but I know how 
people feel, good people like you, when any 
one near them dies. They forget all the kind- 
ness they showed, and they remember or else 
invent some slight or some — something that 
hurts them looking back. Well, dear, you’ll 
have nothing to be sorry for — you must re- 
member that I said — ” 

Milly,” I interrupted, hurrying across the 
room, ” I forgot to show you something I 
found for you. Look!” 


194 


THE NEW MOON. 


'‘Why, it’s a horse-shoe, isn’t it?” she said 
feebly, but with interest. 

"Yes, and you know that means Good 
Luck.” I brought it over to the bedside. 

She smiled, but very weakly. 

" It’s too late,” she said. 

“ Not a bit of it,” I said. " The horse-shoe 
is a sign that it isn’t too late.” 

" Perhaps it means I’m not going to — not 
going to be hurt — ” She shut her eyes, and 
the tears crept out from under the lashes. 
"Jiffy, do you suppose people suffer much 
when they die?” 

" Look,” I said, my voice shaking a little. 
" There are seven holes in this horse-shoe. 
Isn’t there some virtue in seven?” She 
opened her eyes. 

" Yes,” she said. " It’s the sacred number. 
Don’t you remember there were seven churches, 
and a book with seven seals, and a beast with 
seven heads — ” 


THE NEW MOON. 


195 


No, no,” I answered hurriedly, with a 
grotesque sense of the doubtful cheer in my 
having conjured up the red dragon of the 
Revelation. *^No, I was thinking of the seven 
golden candlesticks and the seven stars — they 
were stars of good fortune, you remember?” 

“ Does it say so ? ” 

Why, don’t you remember?” 

No, I’d forgotten.” 

Come now, where shall I put this fine piece 
of luck ? ” I held out the horse-shoe. 

‘^There’s a nail in my ring-casket.” 

Oh, we’ll just set it on the mantelpiece. 
So ! ” I stood it against the clock. 

“No, no. Jiffy/* she protested feebly, half 
rising from the pillow. “ Don’t set it down so ; 
it must be nailed up — but it’s no use,” she 
added, dropping back, “ it’s no use now.” 

“Yes, it is,” I said. “Suppose we nail it 
over the door? ” I went to the bureau, opened 
the heart-shaped silver box, and turned over 


196 


THE NEW MOON. 


trinkets till I found a brass-headed nail. ** What 
an odd place to keep nails! ” I said to myself. 
My wife was watching me. 

“ Isn’t that a nice nail? ” she said. I kept 
it because I found it lying with its point to- 
wards me.” 

Oh, that was a good sign,” I said confi- 
dently, though what I meant I couldn’t have 
told for my life. Is there a hammer about? ” 

No, Geoffrey. What is burning? ” 
'^Burning? Nothing. Here, I’ll use my 
boot.” I took one of a heavy hob-nailed pair 
from the corner. I carried a chair to the 
threshold, mounted it, and began to nail the 
shoe in place. 

I can’t see. Jiffy. Your head’s in the 
way.” I stepped down, hearing a cry of dis- 
tress from my wife at the moment that I be- 
came aware of steps along the corridor. An 
instant, and Dorothy Lance stood framed in 
the doorway. The pallid electric light fell on 


THE NEW MOON. 


197 


her beautiful face, and turned her white gown 
to silver. 

O Miss Lance!” I said, coming forward to 
move the chair. I was asking myself nervously 
why my wife had cried out at the apparition. 

** The door was open and nobody about,” 
Dorothy said to me, with a distant little smile, 
so I ventured to find my way alone. But it’s 
a complicated old place; I felt hopelessly lost 
till I heard your voices.” She moved towards 
Milly’s bed. 

'"This is Miss Lance,” I said — “my wife.” 

“ I heard you were not so well,” the girl 
said, while I crossed the room and shut the 
door. Dorothy will take cold, I thought, with 
that thin shawl slipping away from her bare 
neck. “ I — I hoped I might be of use in some 
way,” the girl was saying when I came back. 
My wife held out a frail little hand. Dorothy 
hesitated the fraction of a second before she 
took it. 


198 


THE NEW MOON. 


'' Thank you,” said my wife, you are very 
kind. Jiffy dear, you’ve nailed it wrong side 
up.” Her eyes were fixed above the door. 
Dorothy’s and mine followed. 

“ Wrong side up? ” I echoed. 

'"Yes, a horse-shoe is of no use like that. 
Turn it up like a U, or else all the luck will 
run out of the ends.” 

“ Oh ! ” I said, with a swift glance at Dorothy 
standing at the bedside, stately and tall in her 
shining robes. I felt an ignoble shame that she 
should catch me at my childish work. But I 
mounted the chair, prized up the shoe, and re- 
versed it. ‘"That right?” I said, moving my 
head out of Milly’s line of vision. 

^‘Yes,” she said, and I noticed that excite- 
ment or something had made her voice a little 
stronger. 

With the great clumsy boot I hammered in 
the nail a second time, smiling grimly all to 
myself, to think of the impressive figure I was 


THE NEW MOON. 


199 


cutting before the critical Dorothy. I got 
down and rubbed my fingers on my handker- 
chief. Now nothing can go wrong with us,” 
I said, trying to speak lightly, and looking at 
the two women. Never had I seen Dorothy so 
radiant and full of glowing life as she loolced 
standing there beside the sick-bed of my wife. 

She is like Diana,” I said to myself. “ She is 
the new moon shining in the night.” 

” Do you believe in luck?” my wife asked 
the white vision. 

“ No,” said Dorothy, apparently without 
thinking. I gave her a warning look, and 
came and sat by the opposite side of the bed. 

“ Oh, don’t you ? ” said Milly, a shade disap- 
pointed. ” My husband used to laugh at my 
signs, but I realised to-night that in spite of 
all his sermons and scoffing he is superstitious 
himself, at least about one or two things.” 

“Oh!” said Dorothy, but so coldly I felt 
myself growing numb. 


200 


THE NEW MOON. 


*‘Yes.” My wife put out her hand to me. 
With a sense of pain and defiance, I took it 
and clasped it tight. Dorothy’s eyes burnt 
me. Yes,” Milly repeated, when my hus- 
band saw the new moon through glass he was 
as frightened and as silent as I was.” 

I lifted my eyes and met the quick inquiry 
of Dorothy’s gaze full in my face. Had I let 
her believe it was the moon ? Dorothy was ask- 
ing silently. Had I ? had I ? I repeated to my- 
self, and bent my head. 

“ He knew I saw it too,” my wife went on in 
the rambling fashion of the sick, and that I’d 
seen it for the third time. Darling, I’ll never 
believe again you’re not superstitious.” My 
wife withdrew her hand out of my grasp, and 
laid it softly on my head. The word of en- 
dearment flashed into my quivering tissues like 
a knife. I felt Dorothy’s flesh shrinking under 
it too. The thin little hand on my hair 
weighed like the stifling earth on a creature 


THE NEW MOON. 


201 


buried alive. I lifted my head with a super- 
human effort. 

“ You forget I told you it couldn’t possibly 
be the moon.” 

"‘Yes, after we had sat there like stones for 
a long time, and the moon had had time to go 
under a cloud.” 

Something forced me to look again at Doro- 
thy. All the rich colour had fled out of her 
face ; she was staring at me with a kind of horror 
in her eyes. As I looked, she shook her head 
with a motion so slight that had my senses not 
been preternaturally quickened I could scarce 
have seen the action. But that ” No, no, no,” 
shut the door of hope on all the future. She 
had seen the spectre of Crime rise up between us. 

My wife was talking on, but neither Dorothy 
nor I had heard a syllable. I passed my hand 
over my eyes. The room seemed full of haze. 
Suddenly the girl lifted her head with a reso- 
lute air, and said hurriedly : 


202 


THE NEW MOON. 


'' But, Mrs. Monroe, it — it’s quite impossible 
that you could have seen the new moon. The 
night is cloudy or you’d be able soon to see it 
old and waning, as I did last night.” 

She pressed her hands against her breast and 
smiled in such a way I could have cried aloud. 

I think Fm the new moon, Mrs. Monroe. 
I hung my lamp up in the dusk and so misled 
you — both.” 

You hung up a lamp in the chalet? ’* My 
wife half sat up, leaning on her elbow. 

‘'Yes, a lantern in the gable window facing 
yours. There’s a fete to-night in Nieder-Fich- 
tenberg, and a torch-light dance. I wanted to 
illuminate a little to — to please some one. I 
had only one little lantern—” She stopped. 
Her voice seemed to fail her. 

“ But when my husband and I looked out we 
didn’t see a gleam of light at the chalet.” 

“Ah, but that was because Donald — my 
cousin — had just come back and I had taken it 


THE NEW MOON. 


203 


down. I’ll tell you what I’ll do — I’ll go back 
and put the sign — the illumination up again, 
and you can see for yourself.” She turned 
abruptly away and opened the door. A cloud 
of smoke rolled into the room over her head. 

Fire!” she said, starting back. 

“ No, surely not.” I jumped up and ran into 
the hall. It was pitch-dark, and the thick black 
smoke was rolling up the staircase. 

“ We mustn’t lose a moment,” I said, rushing 
back into the room. 

I told my husband I smelt fire,” Milly was 
saying. 

Dorothy had brought some clothes to the 
bedside. 

^‘No time to dress,” I cried. I dragged a 
couple of blankets from under the coverlet and 
gave one to Dorothy. I threw the other round 
my wife. “ We must get out of this as soon as 
possible. Don’t wait for us,” I said to Dorothy. 
Cover up your head as you go downstairs, and 


204 


THE NEW MOON. 


give the alarm.’' When I had lifted my wife 
in my arms Dorothy had melted into the thick- 
ening haze. 

Put your arms round my neck and hold 
tight,” I said to my wife, and made for the 
door. It was all right till we got a few paces 
down the corridor, when suddenly I seemed to 
plunge into a sea of stifling smoke. It closed 
over our heads, blinding me utterly. As the 
stinging clouds poured into my lungs I reeled 
against the wall. I pressed my face against the 
blanket that I had thrown over Milly’s head, 
and struggled for breath. I heard her muffled 
voice saying, Hurry! hurry! we’ll be burnt 
to death,” and I stumbled on. You’ve passed 
the turning to the stairs,” she said the next 
moment. 

^^No,” I said, I think not.” 

I’m sure,” she said. You’re going into 
the long wing.” 

I stopped and leaned against the wall. “ Dor- 


THE NEW MOON. 


205 


othy! Dorothy!” I said to myself aimlessly, 
while I fought for breath. “ Dorothy I Doro- 
thy ! ” I kept repeating as I staggered on, feeling 
the smoke thicken into stinging wool, and the air 
grow hot as from a furnace. Suddenly it came 
over me that I had missed the way ; I was lost 
in that network of corridors. Milly and I would 
die there like rats in a hole. Well, Dorothy is 
safe,” I said to myself, and nothing else seemed 
to matter. It was as if the smoke had entered 
my brain and made a twilight there. 

Geoffrey, why are you stopping? ” 

My arms loosened their hold. 

“Milly, can you stand just a moment?” I 
said desperately, and I tumbled against the wall. 
She dropped helplessly at my feet. 

“ Geoffrey, Geoffrey, don’t let me die here!” 
Her terrified voice found me in the choking 
dark. 

I steadied myself and was conscious of some- 
thing coming against me. 


206 


THE NEW MOON. 


Is it you, Milly ? ” I groped with my hands. 

No, it’s I,” said a different voice. 

I trembled violently. My fingers were buried 
in Dorothy’s thick, soft hair. 

*^You here!” I said, holding her head with 
both my hands. 

Yes,” and she fell against my breast. What 
is this at your feet between us? ” 

“ Hush, hush! she has fainted, I think,” and 
I drew away and stooped to lift my burden in 
my arms. But a new strength had come to 
me. I held my wife with one arm, and with 
my free hand drew Dorothy along in the sti- 
fling, hideous dark. We began to run again, 
and the motion revived my wife. We flung 
ourselves against sudden turns and angles, and 
groped, and ran, and stumbled, and ran on 
again. Milly kept crying: 

Save me, Geoffrey, save me ! Oh, it’s 
horrible to be burnt to death ! Save me, save 
me! O God! O God!” 


THE NEW MOON. 


207 


Dorothy spoke no word, only clung to my 
hand. At the end of that eternity that was 
only a few seconds, we reached a door. 

** At last ! ” I heard Dorothy cry as she tried 
it. It was bolted, or else the latch caught. 

Force it open,” my wife shrieked. “It’s 
the wing staircase ! Oh, I said we’d come too 
far! O God! O God! We’ll never get out. 

0 God! O God!” she kept moaning. 

At last the door gave way and we started 
back, flying madly up the hall before the vol- 
ume of smoke and flame that belched out upon 
us. The next thing I was conscious of was that 
my wife’s hoarse crying was stilled, and that 
Dorothy was stumbling and falling in the dark. 

1 tightened my hold and dragged her on, while 

the flames gained on us moment by moment. 

Suddenly Dorothy fell forward on her knees. 

Instead of struggling to her feet as she had 

done more than once before, she crouched there 

silent and motionless. When I opened my 
14 


208 


THE NEW MOON. 


hand hers dropped limp and nerveless out of 
my death-like grip. 

Dorothy,” I cried, “ we’re near the main 
staircase. We’re all right. Come, come!” I 
stooped with difficulty, cumbered as I was, and 
held my free hand out in the dark. 

“Come, for God’s sake, come!” Blind and 
only half conscious, I stooped lower and lower 
till I was down on one knee. My hand touched 
the soft fabric of her gown. She seemed to be 
lying on her back outstretched, relaxed like one 
in sleep. 

“ Come, come, I can’t leave you to this hor- 
rible death ! ” I said. My fingers began to sting. 
Ah, that was it! Her clothes had caught fire. 
I had been too blinded with the smoke to see. 
The blanket round my wife was blazing too. I 
crushed the flame against me, deadening, killing 
it. “ Dorothy,” I cried, “ my darling, my dar- 
ling ! ” I felt her face. She seemed to kiss my 
hand. Her flesh was parched and hot. Did I 


THE NEW MOON. 


209 


imagine it, or was her hair on fire? My wife 
stirred in my arms. I can save one^ I thought, 
and my mind cleared, as they say a drowning 
man’s does sometimes. In a lurid flash I saw 
the past, our long struggle with ourselves and 
circumstances — and I saw two possible futures. 
Let no one say I did not choose. Let no one 
say I did not clearly know what I took, and all 
that I was leaving in that hissing hell behind 
me. I staggered to my feet and plunged 
through the smoke. Fll come back to you, 
dear. Fll come back to you,” I cried, as I 
reeled down the wide staircase, and fell into a 
mob of screaming, crying people. Everything 
was dark for a few moments, and then I felt 
cold water dashing in my face. I opened my 
eyes. I looked up and saw the great flames 
flaring out of the windows like flags in a 
gale. I saw M'Kay lift my wife into another 
man's arms, and turn back to the burning 
house. 


210 


THE NEW MOON. 


“ No, no ! ” I shouted, leaping up from the 
ground. 

M^Kay was running up the steps. 

Not you^ damn you ! I told her Fd come.’^ 
I hurled him out of my way, and plunged back 
into the smoke. I heard cries echoing behind 
me, I heard the roar of fire on before, but it 
strung my nerves like a trumpet-blast in 
battle. 

“I’m coming, dear!” I cried aloud, and I 
spread out my arms as if I thought to find her 
coming down the flaming stair to meet her 
lover. It went through my mind — her beau- 
tiful hair will be burnt if I don’t hurry; her 
gown of “white samite, mystic, wonderful.” 
Not her dear flesh, no — no I not the dear, white 
flesh — 

“I’m coming! I’ve seen the light in the 
window. I’m coming!” I cried again. And 
then the banisters crumbled under my weight. 


THE NEW MOON. 


211 


and I fell headlong over the side. But I re- 
member distinctly, as I cut through the hot 
air, I seemed to be flying — flying upward. I 
spread out my arms — “ I’m coming, dear — I’m 
coming!” 

They got me out somehow, maimed and crip- 
pled; but she who had been Dorothy Lance 
was never seen of men after I had turned away 
and left her in the burning corridor. 

My wife was quite unhurt. She lived for 
nearly a year after the night of the fire, and 
died of peritonitis only three months ago. The 
internal injury that I sustained has slowly 
sapped my strength, and I should know, even 
if I had not been frankly warned, that my time 
is very short. It is well, at least, that I am not 
mocked by health of body, when all that gave 
my life its savour and its meaning is lost out of 
the world. I thank the gods for this obscure 


212 


THE NEW MOON. 


and baffling mischief, that manifests itself in 
such paroxysms of recurrent pain as have 
made my pen drop from my hand a score of 
times while I have been setting down these 
fragments of the past. But in the gathering 
gloom the thought of Dorothy Lance shines 
out like a star. Dear heart, you made life 
beautiful, and you make death calm! I am 
not sure, as I sit here, that I am not most glad 
of all that the great seal is set on our dear 
love. It is safe — safe as only things ended are. 
It is finished, quite, quite finished, dear, and 
laid away among the things that are not marked 
by stones nor mocked by man’s memorials. I 
need not, in any dim antechamber of my brain, 
wonder: Will our love last? Shall I find you 
always fair? Will age and illness only draw 
us closer as the years go on? Or shall I, who 
wearied of my youth’s allegiance, weary once 
again — or will you ? Not even in dreams can 
these thorns wound me now. The dread I 


THE NEW MOON. 


213 


used to feel of being haunted by your look of 
. horror when you gazed into my eyes across the 
body of my wife — that, too, is gone. When I 
see your face, my dear, it smiles, and smiles, 
and understands — 


THE END. 












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of Mexico. What they see and what they do are described in a vivacious 
style which renders the book most valuable to those who wish an interesting 
Mexican travel-book unencumbered with details, while the story as a story 
sustains the high reputation of this talented author. 


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D. APPLETON & CO.’S PUBLICATIONS, 


NOVELS BY HALL CAINE. 

HE MANXMAN, By Hall Caine. i2mo. 

Cloth, $1.50. 

“ A story of marvelous dramatic intensity, and in its ethical meaning has a force 
comparable only to Hawthorne’s ‘ Scarlet Letter.’ ” — Boston Beacon. 

“ A work of power which is another stone added to the foundation of enduring fame 
to which Mr. Caine is yearly adding.” — Public Opmion. 

“ A wonderfully strong study of character; a powerful analysis of those elements 
which go to make up the strength and weakness of a man, which are at fierce warfare 
within the same breast : contending against each other, as it were, the one to raise him 
to fame and power, the other to drag him down to degradation and shame. Never in 
the whole range of literature have we seen the struggle between these forces for 
supremacy over the man more powerfully, more realistically delineated, than Mr. Caine 
pictures it.” — Boston Home yournal. 

“ ‘The Manxman' is one of the most notable novels of the year, and is unquestion- 
ably destined to perpetuate the fame of Hall Caine for many a year tojcome.” — Pkila- 
de.phia. Telegrath, 

” The author exhibits a mastery of the elemental passions of life that places him 
high among the foremost of present writers of isOxors’' --Philadelphia Inquirer. 

HE DEEMSTER. A Romance of the Isle of 

Man. By Hall Caine. i2mo. Cloth, $1.50. 

” Hall Caine has already given us some very strong and fine work, and * The 
Deemster' is a story of unusual power. . . Certain passages and chapters have an 

intensely dramatic grasp, and hold the fascinated reader with a force rarely excited 
nowadays in literature.” — The Critic. 

“ One of the strongest novels which has appeared for many a day.” — San Fran- 
cisco Chronicle. 

" Fascinates the mind like the gathering and bursting of a storm.” — Illustrated 
London News. 

“Deserves to be ranked among the remarkable novels of the day. — "Chicago 
Times. 

“ Remarkably powerful, and is undoubtedly one of the strongest works of fiction of 
our time. Its conception and execution are both very fine.” — Philadelphia Inquirer. 

/^APTH DAVY'S HONEYMOON, A Manx 
Yam. By Hall Caine. i2mo. Paper, 50 cts. ; cloth, $1.00. 

“A new departure by this author. Unlike his previous works, this little tale is 
almost wholly humorous, with, however, a current of pathos underneath. It is not 
always that an author can succeed equally well in tragedy and in comedy, but it looks 
as though Mr. Hall Caine would be one of the exceptions.” — London Literary 
World. 

“ It is pleasant to meet the author of ‘ The Deemster' in a brightly humorous little 
.«tory like this. ... It shows the same observation of Manx character, and much of 
the same artistic skill.” — Philadelphia Times. 




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NOVELS BY MAARTEN MAARTENS. 

'THE GREATER GLORY, A Story of High Life. 

^ By Maarten Maartens, author of “God’s Fool,’’ “Joost 

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, “ Until the Appletons discovered the merits of Maarten Maartens, the foremost of 

Dutch novelists, it is doubtful if many American readers knew that there were Dutch 
novelists. His ‘ God’s Fool ' and ‘ Joost Avelingh ’ made for him an American reputa- 
tion. To our mind this just published work of his is his best. . . . He is a master of 
epigram, an artist in description, a prophet in insight.” — Boston Advertiser, 

“It would take several columns to give any adequate idea of the superb way in 
which the Dutch novelist has developed his theme and wrought out one of the most 
impressive stories of the period. ... It belongs to the small class of novels which 
one can not afford to neglect.” — San Francisco Chronicle. 

“ Maarten Maartens stands head and shoulders above the average novelist of the 
day in intellectual subtlety and imaginative power.” — Boston Bectcon, 



OD^S FOOL. 

Cloth, $1.50. 


By Maarten Maartens. 


i2mo. 


“ Throughout there Is an epigrammatic force which would make palatable a less 
interesting story of human lives or one less deftly told.” — London Saturday Review. 

“ Perfectly easy, graceful, humorous. . . . The author’s skill in character-drawing 
is undeniable.” — London Chronicle, 

“ A remarkable work.” — New York Times. 

“ Maarten Maartens has secured a firm footing in the eddies of current literature. 
. . . Pathos deepens into tragedy in the thrilling story of ‘ God’s Fool.’ ” — PhiladeU 
phia Ledger. 

“ Its preface alone stamps the author as one of the leading English novelists of 
to-day.” — Boston Daily Advertiser. 

“The story is wonderfully brilliant. . . . The interest never lags; the style is 
realistic and intense ; and there is a constantly underlying current of subtle humor. 
. . . It is, in short, a book which no student of modem literature should fail to read.” 
—Boston Times. 

“ A story of remarkable interest and point.” — New York Observer, 


7 


VO ST AVELINGH. 

i2mo. Cloth, $1.50. 


By Maarten Maartens. 


"So unmistakably good as to induce the hone that an acquaintance with the Dutyh 
literature of fiction may soon become more general among us.” — Londo7i Morning 
Post. 


“ In scarcely any of the sensational novels of the day will the reader find more 
nature or more human nature.” — London Standard. 

“ A novel of a very high type. At once strongly realistic and powerfully ideal- 
istic.” — London Literary World. 

“ Full of local color and rich in quaint phraseology and suggestion.” — London 
Telegraph. 

“ Maarten Maartens is a capital story-teller.” — Pall Mall Gazette. 

“ Our English writers of fiction will have to look to their —Birmingham 

Daily Post. 


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Books by Mrs. Everard Cotes 


T/ERNON^S AUNT, 


y 


i2mo. Cloth, $1.25. 


(Sara Jeannette Duncan). 

With many Illustrations. 


** Her characters, even when broadly absurd, are always consistent with them- 
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DAUGHTER OF TO-DAY, 

Cloth, $1.50. 


A Novel. 


1 2 mo. 


“ The book is well worth the attention it demands, and if the conviction at last 
slowly dawns upon the reader that it contains a purpose, it is one which has been pro- 
duced by the inevitable law of reaction, and is cleveriy manipulated." — London 
A thencBum. 

“ This novel is a strong and serious piece of work ; one of a kind that is getting too 
rare in these days of universal crankiness.” — Boston Courier. 

“ A new and capital story, full of quiet, happy touches of humor." — Philadelphia 
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SOCIAL DEPARTURE : How Ortho docia and I 

Went Routid the World by Ourselves. With iii Illustrations 
by F. H. Townsend. i2mo. Paper, 75 cents ; cloth, $1.75. 


" Widely read and praised on both sides of the Atlantic and Pacific, with scores of 
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“It is to be doubted whether another book can be found so thoroughly amusing 
from beginning to end.” — Boston Daily Advertiser. 

“ A brighter, merrier, more entirely charming book would be, indeed, difficult to 
find." — St. Louis Republic. 



N AMERICAN GIRL IN LONDON. With 80 
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cloth, $1.50. 


“ One of the most naYve and entertaining books of the season." — New York Ob- 
server. 

“ So sprightly a book as this, on life in London as observed by an American, has 
never before been written.” — Philadelphia Btdletin. 

“Overrunning with cleverness and good-will.” — New York Commercial Adver- 
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HE SIMPLE ADVENTURES OF A MEM- 
SAHIB. With 37 Illustrations by F. H. Townsend. i2mo. 
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“ It is like traveling without leaving one’s armchair to read it. Miss Duncan has 
the descriptive and narrative gift in large measure, and she brings vividly before us 
the street scenes, the interiors, the bewilderingly queer natives, the gayeties of the 
English colony." — Philadelphia Telegraph. 


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BEATRICE WHITBY’S NOVELS. 

HE AWAKENING OF MARY FENWICK, 

i2mo. Paper, 50 cents ; cloth, $1.00. 

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seeming ingenious, and powerful without being overdrawn. York Commeraal 
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ART OF THE FROPERI'Y. i2mo. Paper, 50 

cents ; cloth, $1.00. 

“ The book is a thoroughly good one. The theme is the rebellion of a spirited girl 
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. . . Itis refreshing to read a novel in which there is not a trace of slipshod work." — 
London Spectator. 

MATTER OF SKILL. i2mo. Paper, 50 cents ; 

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and whom eveiwbody will love for her splendid if very independent character.” — Boston 
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NE REASON WHY. i2mo. Paper, 50 cents ; 

cloth, $1.00. 

“ A remarkably well-written story. . . . The author makes her people speak the 
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N THE SUNTIME OF HER YOUTH. i2mo. 

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AR Y FEN WICK *S DA UGH TER. 1 2mo. Pa- 

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N THE LAKE OF LUCERNE, and other Stories. 

i6mo. Boards, with specially designed cover, 50 cents. 

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GEORGE Macdonald’S works. 



OME AGAIN. A Novel. 

half cloth, 75 cents. 


i2mo. Paper, 50 cents; 


“ ‘ Home Again ’ is a more compact and complete story than some of the author's 
later works. It is, of course, full of good things, pithy sayings, and deep thought. 
. . . A master’s hand shows itself in every page.” — Literary World. 

“ Teaches a wholesome lesson, and, like most of the author’s stories, is full of shrewd 
insight and fine suggestiveness.”— News and Courier. 

“ The novel has great strength. It will furnish lasting pleasure. . . . The pages 
are luminous with helpful thoughts.” — Hartford Evening Post. 

“ One of the author’s pleasantest and most wholesome tales, redolent of natural, 
healthy country ^Brooklyn Eagle. 


T 


'HE ELECT LADY. 

half cloth, 75 cents. 


i2mo. Paper, 50 cents; 


“There are some good bits of dialogue and strong situations in the book.” — The 
A ihemeum. 

“ Rich in imaginative beauty and fine insight into the mysteries of spiritual life.” — 
London Spectator. 

“As in previous books by Mr. MacDonald, a master-hand is perceptible in every 
page. It would be impossible to read ‘ The Elect Lady ’ without the feeling of having 
been edified by the perusal.” — Baltimore A merican. 

“The story is one to charm the mind of the cultivated reader. Mr. MacDonald 
never yet set pen to a book that was not both an enjoyment amd an uplift to the mind.” 
— Chicago Journal. 


'J^HE FLLGHT OF THE 

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SHADOW. i2mo. 


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remain among the forces which have helped to save moral and spiritual life from 
formality, bigotry, and death.” — Public Opinion. 

“ Mr. MacDonald’s novels have a host of admirers, who will eagerly welcome a 
new one from the same prolific pen.” — Syracuse Herald. 


7 ^HE HOPE OF THE GOSPEL. i2mo. Cloth, 
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“George MacDonald began life as a preacher; and always, whether in sermon 
or story, he is a preacher yet. He is al.so one of the most fervent of preachers. ... In 
respect to simplicity, vitality, and directness of style, these sermons might be studied 
with special profit.” — Advance. 

“These sermons are marked by that same broad and all-embracing charity which 
has characterized the writer’s works of fiction.” — San Francisco Evening Post. 

“ In homely language, which is a sure means to touch the heart, the author delivers 
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